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THE CATHEDRALS AND 
CHURCHES OF NORTHERN 
ITALY 



The Cathedral Series 

The following, each i vol., library 
l2mo, cloth, gilt (op, profusely illus- 
trated. $2.50 

The Cathedrals of Northern 
France by fra ncis mil to un 

The Cathedrals of Southern 
France by fra ncis mil toun 

The Cathedrals of England 

BY MARY J. TABER 

The Cathedrals and Churches 

r .1 r>i- BY FRANCIS 

of the Rhine miltoun 

The Cathedrals of Northern 

Spain BY CHARLES RUDY 

The Cathedrals and Churches 
of Northern Italy 

BY T. FRANCIS BUMPUS 

L. C. PAGE tsf COMPANT 

^ew England Building, Boston, Mass. 



A^—T- 



'Si^)^?7^,^f^. 




VENICE 

5t. Mark's (5eepa§el62) 





of i^ortijetn italg 

THEIR HISTORY AND THEIR ARCHI- 
TECTURE; TOGETHER WITH MUCH OF 
INTEREST CONCERNING THE BISHOPS, 
RULERS, AND OTHER PERSONAGES 
IDENTIFIED WITH THEM 

By T. FRANCIS BUMPUS 
Sllufitrateti . 




PAGE AND COMPANY 
)f^' BOSTON MDCCCCVIII 




LIBRARY of OONuHESS' 
Two Cooles Keieito^ 

JUL 24 l»Ob 

CLASSr *<> ' )ac, m^ 
COHV d.r 



,n\ 



^^'-J^* 



Copyright, igo8 
By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 



AH rights reserved 



First Impression, July, 1908 



COLONIAL PRESS 

Eltctrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds &• Co. 

Boston, U.S. A. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGB 

I. Introductory Sketch of Italian Church 

Architecture i 

II. Verona 48 

III. Vicenza 104 

IV. Padua iig 

V. St. Mark's, Venice, and Torcello , . .141 

VI. Ferrara and Bologna 195 

VII. Ravenna . 244 

VIII. Some Lombard Cathedrals and Churches — 
MoDENA, Parma, Piacenza, Cremona, 

Pavia 322 

IX. Milan : St. Ambrose and the Cathedral 389 

A List of Some of the Most Remarkable 
Pictures and Wall-paintings in the 
Churches Described or Alluded to in 

This Work 436 

Index 481 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Venice. — St Mark's (See page 162) . . Frontisp 
Sta. Agata: a Ravennese Basilica . 
Venice. — Interior of Sta, Maria dei Frari , 

Vercelli. — St. Andrew's 

Verona. — West Front of the Cathedral. 

Verona. — St. Zeno 

Verona. — St. Ferno Maggiore .... 

ViCENZA. — Cathedral 

Padua. — Interior of St. Giovanni Battista . 
Padua. — Chapel of the Arena .... 

Padua. — St. Antonio 

Torcello. — Cathedral 

Venice. — Interior of St. Mark's, looking East 

Ferrara. — Cathedral 

Bologna. — St, Stefano, from the West . 
Bologna. — Altar Piece in St. Francesco 
Bologna. — St. Petronio . . . . . 
Ravenna. — St. Giovanni Evangelista 

Ravenna. — St. Vitalis 

Ravenna. — St. Apollinaris in Classe 

Modena. — West Front of the Cathedral 

Modena. — Interior of the Cathedral ; Entrance to the 

„ Crypt 

Parma. — Cathedral 

Parma. — Interior of the Baptistery . 
PiACENZA. — Cathedral, from the Northeast . 

Cremona. — Cathedral 

West front of the Certosa, near Pavia 

Pavia. — West front of St. Michele . 

Pavia. — Interior of the Cathedral, looking Southeast 

Milan. — The Atrium of St. Ambrose . 

Milan. — West Front of the Cathedral . 

NovARRA. — Cathedral, from the Northwest . 



rAGB 

^lece 
14 
26 

34 

69 

86 

92 

106 

122 

124 

140 

154 
176 
196 
210 
224 
228 
279 
302 
312 
334- 

340 
344 
352 
354 
358^ 
3^3 
372 
386, 

392 
424^ 
473 



The Cathedrals and 
Churches of Northern Italy 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF ITALIAN CHURCH 
ARCHITECTURE 

All that I propose attempting in this pre- 
paratory chapter is to give some insight into 
the principles which guided the progress of 
North Italian church art generally, and to 
endeavour to describe some of the most dis- 
tinguishing marks of the different schools, so 
that the reader may be able to distinguish 
one style from another, and also be able to 
decide which churches were built in a com- 
paratively earlier or later period according 
to the knowledge of construction displayed 
in them. It is necessary, however, at starting 
to warn the prospective visitor to Northern 
Italy that he must be prepared for not a few 
bitter disappointments. In far too many in- 
stances work of the Romanesque and Early 
1 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Pointed periods has been concealed by the 
restorations and additions to which the cathe- 
drals and churches were subjected between 
the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.* Still, 
frequently under the superimposed mass. of 
baroque decoration, a shaft, a moulding, or 
a piece of foliaged ornament can be dis- 
cerned, speaking of a period of primitive 
simplicity. 

Some of the earliest buildings erected for 
the purposes of worship are to be found in 
Rome, the native soil of Christianity. I say 
some only, for under Constantine, in whose 
reign the Christians first enjoyed peace, 
churches were erected simultaneously in 
Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem. These 
were, generally speaking, similar in plan and 
arrangement. 

During the first three centuries of the 
Christian era churches can scarcely be said 
to have existed. The ordinary places of wor- 
ship of the early Christians were confined to 
catacombs and other secret places. 

During the same period the architecture 
of heathen Rome had gradually deterio- 

* The interiors of the Cathedral at Ferrara and of the churches 
of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo and San Lorenzo at Milan 
are particularly annoying examples of this treatment. 

2 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

rated; and this followed so regular a course 
that when the Emperor Constantine in the 
year 323 embraced the Christian faith Ro- 
man architecture was at its worst. The nu- 
merous communities of Christians, when they 
emerged from the catacombs and could wor- 
ship in the light of day, had to be provided 
at once with suitable meeting-places. In 
some cities the temples were adapted to this 
purpose by pulling down the cell walls and 
building other walls between the columns, 
or, in the case of smaller temples, by making 
the columns of the peristyle serve as those 
between nave and aisles, while outer walls 
and an apse were added. Several adapta- 
tions of this sort occur to the memory, nota- 
bly at Syracuse, at Vienne, which I visited 
on my return home from this tour, and at 
Cora in the Volscian Mountains, where the 
portico of the temple has been left standing, 
forming anciently a vestibule to the church. 
But as the cella was often too small or the 
peristyle too large for this purpose, and as 
the Christians preferred buildings of their 
own to places defiled by the former presence 
of idols, they either took possession of build- 
ings of another class, or erected churches on 
the model of these edifices. 
3 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Thus it came about that few temples were 
ever adapted for the purposes of Christian 
worship; fewest of all in the capital of the 
Christian world. With the exception of the 
Pantheon we fail to discover any real exam- 
ple in Rome of a temple which can be said 
to owe its preservation, in the proper sense 
of the term, to the Christian clergy. They 
had then no thought of the kind — they took 
no pleasure in such antiquities. Antiquaries 
with eager zeal have collected about ten ex- 
amples in which this preservation is asserted. 
Even in the cases which are least dubious, no 
further merit can be claimed for the hier- 
archy than the accidental preservation of a 
portico, a cella or a wall, an encumbrance 
which it was troublesome to remove, or a 
fragment which saved some expense, built 
up, concealed, marred or deformed by the 
new erection to which it was unwillingly 
conjoined. It could not be otherwise. To 
the early Christians any participation in our 
modern admiration of heathen art would 
have been false and unnatural. All the opin- 
ions, all the reality, all the feeling, all the 
conscience of the early Christians strove 
against the preservation of the memorials of 
heathenism. Neither beauty nor conve- 
4 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

nience, if they had possessed the latter requi- 
site, would, save in some few special cases 
like that of the Pantheon, plead for the pres- 
ervation of the relics of classical antiquity. 
They considered the idols as accursed. 

Could the profession of Christianity find 
any congenial edifices raised by the heathen 
but unpolluted, and wherein the acknowledg- 
ment of faith could be made boldly and be- 
fore the light of day? Such did exist. 
Amongst the structures by which Rome was 
adorned, the secular basilica vied with the 
sacred temple in magnificence and glory. 
The name of the Basilica was derived from 
the portico situated in the Athenian Cerami- 
cus immediately beneath the Pnyx. It was 
here that the Archon, arrayed in the robes 
of royalty, discharged the duties of judge in 
all matters connected with the sanctuary. 
Greatly modified by the Romans — whatever 
the Romans borrowed they borrowed as con- 
querors — the Basilica appeared at an early 
period of the Republic in the Forum. 

In shape the building was an oblong ter- 
minated by the tribunal. In the midst of the 
semicircular apsis arose an elevated platform 
upon which the seat of the praetor was 
placed. This is the portion to which, as gah- 
5 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

hatha or lithostrotos (pavement), St. John 
alludes in the nineteenth chapter of his Gos- 
pel. On either side, but lower down, were 
the seats of the centumviri, the officers, the 
scribes, and all others who participated in 
the honours of the tribunal or the duties of 
judgment, guarded from the intrusion of the 
inferior orders by the cancelli or grated en- 
closures. Still lower down was the portion 
allotted to the notaries and advocates. 

Three-quarters of the building composed a 
vast hall, whilst a transverse aisle or transept, 
if I may so call it, separated this hall from 
the apsis — the peculiar region of dignity 
and awe. In all the basilicas the great hall 
was divided by columns into portions similar 
to the nave and aisles of a church, and these 
columns usually supported a gallery above. 
The central nave generally received light 
from windows in the upper wall. Some- 
times the whole building was roofed, some- 
times only portions. This seems to have been 
the case particularly in those basilicas in 
which a section of the nave, being left open 
to the sky, constituted an atrium within the 
aisles. 

Such was the general type; but without 
any material departure from the normal 
6 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

form, there was, nevertheless, a considerable 
degree of variety in the arrangements, re- 
sulting from the greater or lesser conve- 
nience of site or magnificence of building. 

Besides their capaciousness, even their 
twofold arrangements pointed out these ba- 
silicas as particularly suitable for the service 
of the new religion. What had been the 
distinguishing feature of the secular basilica 
became that of the ecclesiastical one, namely, 
the tribune or spacious semicircular recess 
covered with a semi-dome. This, which 
was, as already stated, the seat of the praetor 
and other magistrates, was now appropriated 
to the bishop, who might thence, like a true 
Episcopus, look down upon the congregation 
and attending clergy; and in front of this 
was placed the altar, in the centre of the 
bema or dais, which was raised several steps 
above the pavement of the rest of the edi- 
fice; and this division of the place was fur- 
ther marked by a larger arch on columns 
{porta triumphalis) corresponding with that 
of the tribune, and of which the idea is still 
retained in the chancel arch of our Gothic 
churches. 

The hall or forum with its colonnades was 
of course assigned to the laity, nor could any 
7 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

arrangement have been better devised for 
imparting a visibly august character to the 
rites and solemnities of the Church than that 
which was directly supplied by the pagan 
basilica. 

Forming part of the cancelli were two 
ambones or pulpits. From the loftier and 
more richly adorned one the Gospel was 
read, and episcopal censures and injunctions 
promulgated. From this pulpit also the 
" bidding prayers " were read and the ser- 
mons preached, but the bishop preached sit- 
ting upon his faldistorium before the altar. 
A small pillar before the Gospel pulpit sup- 
ported the paschal candle. Within the can- 
celli were stationed the singers by whom the 
Offices were chanted. We apply the term 
chancel to the portion of the church enclosed 
by the cancelli. 

The Germans give the name Kanzell to 
the pulpit standing on the cancelli, and all 
the languages of Europe give the title of 
Chancellor or Cancellarius to the successor of 
the officer who stood within these railings.* 

In the Basilica Jovis on the Palatine a 
portion of the cancelli can still be seen in the 

* In later times, when the altars did not permit the bishops 
and clergy to be seen behind them, the presbytery was removed 
8 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

apse and the columns dividing it into a nave 
and aisles. The basilica, thus modified and 
adapted to Christian worship, contained the 
germ of the ecclesiastical architecture of all 
Christendom, and can be traced in every 
cathedral and parish church built at home 
and abroad ever since. There are churches 
on the basilican plan which are called the 
dromia because they are long like a road. 

In the construction of these basilicas the 
columns, capitals and other parts of ancient 
temples were employed; consequently we 
find, as at St. Lorenzo and Sta. Agnese in 
Rome, that these parts do not correspond 
with one another, but that they are of vari- 
ous heights and sizes. 

Rome has adhered to her early traditions 
of church building, consequently we find but 
few variations in plan and details. We have 
the division into a nave and aisles, or in some 
instances with double aisles, of which the 
centre is the widest; the apse adorned with 
mosaics; and the episcopal chair* and the 
altar with its crowning baldachino. 

from the apsis at the back to the chorus in front, though in many 
Italian churches of cathedral and conventual rank the old 
arrangement is still adhered to. 

* As at Torcello and at St. Ambrose, Milan. 
9 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

As a specimen of the primitive Roman 
basilica I would point to St. Lorenzo, which 
is about half a mile outside the gate of that 
name, or to St. Clemente. The former has 
not the apse, but with that exception the stu- 
dent will be able to realize the form and 
proportions of the ancient basilica. In St. 
Clemente he will see the atrium or outer 
court perfect, a feature of which other but 
much later examples occur at St. Ambrogio, 
Milan, and the Cathedral at Palermo. One 
of these atria existed until comparatively re- 
cent times at Novara, where it connected the 
Cathedral with the Baptistery, but it has been 
reproduced, since the reconstruction of that 
cathedral about thirty years ago, in the shape 
of a Corinthian colonnade which, although 
of graceful proportions, but ill compensates 
for the loss of the ancient work. 

Another style of Christian architecture, 
however, arose almost simultaneously with 
the adoption of the basilica at Rome. The 
Emperor Constantine having transferred the 
seat of Empire to Byzantium, there immedi- 
ately sprang into existence a new form 
which to this day is prevalent in the East. 

The Eastern Christians seem to have taken 
the models of their churches from the great 
10 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

domed halls of the public baths. Instead of 
the long nave and presbytery of the Roman 
basilica, four naves or pillared avenues were 
disposed at right angles to each other, so as 
to form the figure of a cross; a dome or 
cupola v^as raised in the centre on four pier 
masses; and in the more sumptuous Byzan- 
tine churches smaller cupolas were reared 
at the extremities of the four arms of the 
cross. 

Another peculiarity consisted in the square- 
ness of their buildings; they did not delight 
in vistas; the exteriors were imposing only 
from the numerous domes which composed 
the roofs and the multitude of curves and 
semicircular arches in every direction. The 
capitals and columns of earlier buildings 
were oftentimes used with incongruous ef- 
fect; and where new capitals had to be re- 
stored, no attempt was made to copy the clas- 
sic examples. They became little more than 
square blocks tapered down to the shaft, and 
decorated with foliage in low relief, or with 
a sort of basket work peculiar to the style. 

The connection which existed between Ra- 
venna and the East accounts for the intro- 
duction of the Byzantine style, which is only 
to be seen there and at Venice. St. Vitale, 
11 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

which was erected in the sixth century, is a 
pure Byzantine church, octagonal in plan 
and adorned with eight splendid mosaics. 
Most of the churches in Ravenna, which for 
the purposes of study may be divided into 
several periods,* have some Byzantine char- 
acter about them. One of the distinguishing 
marks of this style is a large square block 
between the capital and the arch, which re- 
places the ancient abacus. This " dosseret " 
— to give it its correct title — occurs in 
St. Pietro, St. Spirito or St. Teodoro, St. 
Apollinaris Nuovo, and St. Apollinaris in 
Classe, all churches built with Byzantine 
modifications on the basilican plan. 

The state of artistic design was undoubt- 
edly at its lowest when these basilicas began 
to be erected as churches. Their historical 
designs are rude and conventional. The old 
Greek sense of beauty had died out in Rome. 

Luxury and vulgarity had gradually des- 
troyed the manliness of the race and such 



* (l) Before the fall of the Empire of the West in 476; (2) 
from 476 to the death of Theodoric the Arian in 526; (3) from 
this time, through the existence of the Exarchate, to the decline 
of art. 

There is also one Pointed church, St, Niccolo; and St. 
Dominic, though modernized, is probably Pointed in its shell. 
12 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

sense and love of beauty as it had possessed 
in days of vigour and prosperity. Constan- 
tine could find few competent artists either 
to sculpture his triumphal arch or to dec- 
orate his new capital. Still the Christian 
community had carried down with it into its 
subterranean oratories and chapels certain 
traditions of former times. Historical rep- 
resentations, even sometimes under mytho- 
logical types, as that of Orpheus, are habit- 
ual to those interesting monuments. The 
classic tunic and occasionally the nude figure 
continued to be represented in their paint- 
ings. 

As basilica building and decoration pro- 
gressed, a marked difference made itself felt 
between the simplicity of accessories of dress 
and ornament in the West, and the elabora- 
tion of colour and detail in the East. 

The basilicas of Justinian at Ravenna are 
interesting examples of this Byzantine spirit. 
They represent in more than one instance 
the emperor and his court, and the empress 
and hers, with details of costume carefully 
copied. But though these designs were 
rude, they were not lacking in grandeur. 
That nerve and vigour which luxury had 
eaten out of the Italian character was begin- 
13 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ning to grow anew from fresh sources, and 
Christianity really inaugurated the revival 
of the arts. And though, of course, it was 
centuries before the refinement of art in rep- 
resentation of these objects could be attained, 
still some influence of the kind is observable 
in these early Christian representations, and, 
though rude, the faces and forms possess a 
grandeur which no art, with all its charms, 
has since surpassed, purpose, position and 
architectural character of the representations 
being taken into account. 

It was the dome which was chiefly af- 
fected by the Eastern architects, and it be- 
came the distinguishing feature of their 
larger churches. 

Consequently, St. Vitale at Ravenna and 
St. Mark's at Venice, both built by Constan- 
tinopolitan architects, have fine domes. The 
plan of St. Mark's is in the form of a Greek 
cross with four equal arms within an inscri- 
bing square; that of Sta. Sophia is the same, 
and that of a smaller cognominous church at 
Salonica. 

Except when favoured by peculiar politi- 
cal relations, it is remarkable how little in- 
fluence was exerted in Italy by Byzantine 
art. Ravenna and Venice are about the only 
14 



5TA. AGATA 
A Ravennese Basilica 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

localities where we may trace any decided 
imitation of the type of Constantinople. 

Indeed, there was little to be gained. De- 
duct mere barbaric splendour — barbaric 
perhaps in the truest meaning of the word 
— and there is a spirit, a genius, an energy, 
in the rudest churches of Latin Christendom 
wanting in the most sumptuous edifices of 
the Greeks. The very building reflects the 
character of their respective communities. 

The knowledge of the art of building 
which travelled from West to East, from 
Rome to Constantinople, was destined to 
return in an improved form; for the Arabs, 
who were in the early period of Mohamme- 
danism quick, intelligent people, borrowed 
the dome from Byzantium, improved the 
form of the arch from round to pointed, and 
brought them back with them to Sicily in 
the ninth century. Specimens of their 
handiwork can be seen in La Tiza at Pa- 
lermo and other buildings. Their succes- 
sors, the Normans, who were famed for their 
church-building talents, perceived the beau- 
ties and refinement of Arab architecture, and 
made use of them in two buildings, which 
all who have seen will allow are gems of 
architecture and decoration. One of these 
15 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

is the Maritana or Capella Reale at Pa- 
lermo, built in 1 132 by Roger. The other 
is the Cathedral at Monreale, built by Will- 
iam III. in 1 176, which in all probability fur- 
nished the model for St. Antonio at Padua 
and the Westphalian Cathedral of Miinster. 

Of all the Italian districts none can pos- 
sess more fascination for the student than 
that peopled by the Longobardi or Long- 
beards. Extending from the Apennines to 
the Alps, it abounds with fine cathedrals and 
churches in the Romanesque style, called 
from its inventors the Lombard, and to its 
several peculiarities the greater part of my 
attention during this tour was directed. 

During many centuries Lombardy was a 
fief of the German Empire. On this ac- 
count, therefore, and likewise through the 
connection of this part of Italy geograph- 
ically with the Brenner Pass, we are not sur- 
prised to find a great resemblance existing 
in many particulars between the Lombardic 
and Rhenish Romanesque churches. 

Many details of Lombardic architecture 
were formed out of the Byzantine; for Con- 
stantinople had between the tenth and thir- 
teenth centuries become the centre of the arts 
and industry. The Greeks of that city were 
16 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the arbitri elegantiarum to the rest of the 
world, as the Athenians had been before 
them. Greek artists were employed in Italy 
after Ravenna became the capital of the 
Exarchate, and the Greek style adopted. 

Most of the larger Lombard churches are 
interesting from the symbolical sculptures on 
their fagades, as well as from the impressive 
grandeur of their interiors. The Lombard 
style was never entirely suspended in Italy 
till the Renaissance of the classical ; ^ and, 
as I have already observed, so many styles 
had a coeval existence in Italy, that the data 
by which we judge of a building in France 
and England lose much of their certainty 
when applied here. 

The chief characteristics of the Lombard 
School are vaulted roofs in place of the 
wooden ones which cover the more Southern 
churches; pilasters and columns in place of 
fiat buttresses; external arcades and corbel 
tables; the octagonal lantern with its low 
capping of tiles; and particularly the fa- 
gades which, with their projecting porches 

* In many of these Lombard churches a keen eye is required 
to detect how much is genuine Romanesque work, and how 
much is that later production of which one sees so many ex- 
amples in Italy. 

17 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

whose columns stand upon lions and other 
animals, reproduced themselves throughout 
Italy until the extinction of Gothic before 
the close of the fifteenth century. 

The class of front common to most of the 
Lombard Gothic churches is one that is in- 
cluded beneath a low-pitched gable, and 
screening the ends of the lean-to aisles. 
The cornice, which is generally of slight 
projection but deep and marked in character, 
is carried up the depressed gable, whilst the 
whole front, divided by vertical pilasters 
into three or five compartments, continued 
right up to the cornice, cutting through 
whatever string-courses or horizontal mould- 
ings (if there were any) separated the dif- 
ferent stories or stages of the edifice. 

Such buttress-like surfaces — for buttresses 
they cannot properly be called — were occa- 
sionally more or less enriched, sometimes so 
much so as to produce vertical lines of orna- 
ment continued to the entire height of the 
building, as at St. Michele, Pavia, that city 
being considered the cradle of Lombardic 
architecture.* The usual decoration of the 

^ It is curious to observe how this type of facade was employed, 
though with varying details, from the earliest to the latest epochs 
of Italian Gothic. 

IS 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

centre compartment is what is termed a 
" Wheel of Fortune " window, so called 
from the figures which, illustrating the Zo- 
diac, are introduced into its moulding. The 
spokes of the wheel are generally pillarets 
radiating from a circle or a quatrefoil. 

As a rule the Lombard portals are rich 
and elaborate, exhibiting a variety of mould- 
ings and ornaments which are unsurpassed 
in Northern work for the skill and delicacy 
of their execution. Another feature is the 
open gallery immediately below the cornice 
of the gable surmounting the fagade. Usu- 
ally this open gallery is carried completely 
round the church above the clerestory, in- 
cluding the apses which terminate the choir 
or open from the eastern sides of the tran- 
septs, just as may be seen in the Cologne and 
other Rhenish churches, not a few of which 
exceed in grandeur of dimensions their Lom- 
bard prototypes. 

One of the truest types of a Lombardo- 
Romanesque fagade is that of the Cathedral 
at Casale Monferrato, to which I paid an 
early morning visit, between trains, on my 
way from Asti to Vercelli. Behind this fa- 
gade, which extends the whole breadth of 
the five-aisled church — so imposing from 
19 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

its four ranges of tall columns supporting 
round arches — is one of the most wonderful 
narthexes in Italy, of the richest Roman- 
esque architecture, and presenting a system 
of groining to which no written description 
could do justice. 

A small but very characteristic and pleas- 
ing front is that of St. Francesco at Brescia. 
Then we have the richer and more imposing 
ones of St. Zeno at Verona; of the cathe- 
drals at Modena, Cremona and Piacenza, 
and, most graceful of all, the lower part of 
that at Ferrara. The fagades of St. Abbon- 
dio at Como, and of St. Donino, near 
Parma, are small but graceful conceptions 
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 

The round-arched Lombard style seems to 
have lasted to the end of the twelfth century. 
At the beginning of the thirteenth the 
pointed arch came to be used in conjunction 
with it, but whether in its round-arched or 
pointed phase the Lombard style has pro- 
duced some of the most imposing of trans- 
alpine interiors, particularly those of St. 
Ambrogio at Milan, St. Michele at Pavia 
and St. Zeno at Verona, the exterior of the 
choir and transepts of Sta. Maria Maggiore 
at BergamOj and the mass of the cathedrals 
20 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

at Modena, Parma and Piacenza, with their 
choirs grandly raised upon crypts and all of 
the highest interest, while the workmanship 
is, generally speaking, of the best. 

Of all the Lombard cities, I know none 
more charming than Bergamo. Quite dis- 
tinct from the new city, it lies upon the sum- 
mit of a very steep hill, whence the most 
glorious panoramic views of the surrounding 
country can be enjoyed. 

Here, forming the nucleus of a congeries 
of streets is an open place containing the 
Cathedral, an uninteresting specimen of the 
Italian baroque style; and the contiguous 
Sta. Maria Maggiore, a small but most 
graceful Romanesque church externally, un- 
fortunately quite modernized within, though 
enshrining what is very rare in Italy, a tall 
open rood-screen. Here too is a very charm- 
ing pointed Gothic broletto or civic hall, 
and in another part of the city we find the 
desecrated St. Agostino, the possessor of a 
fagade whose two windows, with their reed- 
like recessed jamb shafts and delicate tra- 
cery, to say nothing of the exquisite pale 
brown of their stone-work, will alike en- 
chant the architect and the artist. 

Of the Tuscan school, which surpasses the 
21 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

round-arched one of Lombardy in grace, 
it hardly comes within my province to 
speak; but it is impossible to refrain from 
mentioning such gems as the Cathedral of 
Lucca and the church at Toscanella, or that 
picturesque group of cathedral, baptistery, 
leaning tower and Campo Santo, which, 
springing out of the greensward in a de- 
serted corner of the city of Pisa, affords an 
example of the perfection of Romanesque 
art. 

If a salient interest were required of the 
effect of geographical position and commer- 
cial relations upon architecture, one could 
not point to any more striking than is dis- 
played by two towns, not much more than 
forty miles apart in precisely the same de- 
gree of latitude, in the one of which the ar- 
chitecture is essentially Northern Gothic in 
feeling — so far as Italy ever attained this 
feeling — while in the other, despite Gothic 
forms of detail, the whole feeling and treat- 
ment of the architecture breathes of Oriental 
fancy and sumptuousness. Architecture, like 
some natural growth, changes its colour, ex- 
pands or contracts with the soil and the cir- 
cumstances by which it is influenced. The 
same grand commercial site on the Adriatic 
22 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

which gave Venice the key to the stores of 
the " exhaustless East," which brought her 
into the great air of republican freedom and 
growth, gave to her architects also the op- 
portunity and temptation to experiment in 
forms of lavish and abnormal architectural 
splendour, while her neighbour Verona, the 
pocket borough of the Scaligeri, remained in 
the more respectable beaten paths both polit- 
ically and architecturally. Which city is, 
in the latter point of view, of most value 
may be contested; it may be correct to say 
that there is more for the Northern architect 
to learn from in Verona, more to admire 
and wonder at in Venice. The architecture 
of Verona is strictly architectural, that of 
Venice is to a great extent more picturesque 
than architectural. Verona affords admira- 
ble exemplification of the treatment of mate- 
rial, brick and marble especially, on purely 
architectural principles, yet with sufficient 
regard to effect and variety. 

Of the result to be obtained from a simple 
and bold use of building materials, almost 
without actual " ornament," the famous 
tower of the Scaliger Palace is a remarkable 
instance; and, on the other hand, pictur- 
esqueness of detail is seen in such things as 
23 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the varied marble inlay pavements, and the 
famous flexible iron grille before the Piazza 
dei Signori. Then the details of the brick 
architecture of St. Zeno and St. Fermo fur- 
nish, inter alia, examples of what one may 
term the common sense of architectural de- 
sign, and yet with truly refined feeling and 
artistic effect. There is probably more here 
that is valuable for the architect to study 
than at Venice, where the picturesque is the 
predominant aim and the means whereby 
this is attained will not, in many cases, bear 
too severe a critical examination. 

In Northern countries, Gothic, and espe- 
cially Pointed Gothic, was a favourite style, 
hallowed by religion, chivalry and art; and 
the inroads of any principle at variance with 
it could not work its overthrow without a 
severe struggle; whence, particularly in 
France, we often see noble churches of 
Gothic proportions almost entirely made up 
of Italian details. St.-Eustache and St.-£ti- 
enne-du-Mont at Paris are fine examples of 
this, as are the western fagade of St. Michael 
at Dijon, and the Church of St.-Pierre at 
Auxerre. 

In Italy the Complete Gothic style was 
always an importation from the North, and 
24 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

not introduced there until long after it was 
established in England, France and Ger- 
many; in consequence of which the details 
of Northern buildings of different periods 
are often found mingled in the same church. 
From Germany the Pointed style as it flowed 
westward to France passed southward to 
Italy, of which the nearest regions had so 
long acknowledged German sway; and when 
it was adopted, its principles were but im- 
perfectly comprehended, and buildings were 
produced which, while abounding in much 
gracefulness and delicacy of detail, are on 
the whole cold, unmeaning, inartistic pro- 
ductions, with all the defects, and hardly 
one of the beauties, of the true Pointed 
Gothic edifices. Only so long as the Lom- 
bards retained their nationality were truly 
great and original buildings produced; and 
when their distinct character had died out, 
and when the indigenous race resumed its 
sway, their architecture deteriorated. 

It seems strange that the period comprised 
between the middle of the thirteenth and the 
end of the fourteenth centuries, during 
which such structures as Rheims, Lincoln 
and Strasburg Cathedrals were slowly grow- 
ing up into their present form, should, in 
25 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Italy, have witnessed the production of 
churches which, however much they may 
astonish us by the grandeur o: >their dimen- 
sions, break down so complete/ when we 
come to examine their construction and de- 
tails. I refer more particularly to such 
churches as St. Antonio at Padua — a re- 
markable, if not altogether a pleasing, at- 
tempt of Niccola Pisano to adapt a Byzan- 
tine feature, the dome, to the Pointed style; 
the cathedrals at Asti, Siena, Orvieto and 
Florence, all in progress between 1250 and 
1350; SS. Giovanni e Paolo and the Church 
of the Frari at Venice; St. Lorenzo and La 
Santa Corona at Vicenza; St. Francesco, 
St. Giovanni in Monti and St. Petronio at 
Bologna; the Cathedral at Milan and the 
Certosa at Pavia. Of these the three last 
were only begun when the fourteenth cen- 
tury was drawing to its close. That these 
great churches are not without some beauties 
of their own it would be idle to deny; but 
taken as a whole they are certainly inferior, 
both in design and power of expression, to 
those of the round-arched style which pre- 
ceded them, and immeasurably so in com- 
pleteness and finish of arrangement and de- 
tail to those of the Northern style which they 
26 



VENICE 

Interior of 5ta. Maria dei Frari 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

so vainly tried to imitate. It may be that in 
some respects the shortcomings of these huge 
edifices are not chargeable to the original 
design, as they depended much more for 
effect on their sculpturesque and polychro- 
matic decoration, in which the Italians were 
always at home, and probably always sur- 
passed the Northern nations. 

In comparing Italian with Northern 
Gothic, we cannot but notice the difference 
in the windows, not only as regards their rel- 
ative frequency and size but also their archi- 
tectural character. In the great Northern 
churches the architects delighted in large 
and elaborate windows. In Italy they were 
few and far between. The brightness of the 
sunny South taught its builders to exclude 
light and glare, and the use of coloured glass 
was discouraged. 

It may be doubted, indeed, if such use 
would have been consistent with the methods 
of internal decoration common in Italy. 
Great spaces of wall covered with fresco 
painting might not unreasonably be thought 
inimical to the adoption of painted glass, 
through which a bright light would cast 
hues of undisguised variety on the carefully 
studied harmonies of the painter. 
27 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

In England, and still more in France, the 
introduction of stained glass affected the 
churches to an enormous extent. 

If these countries had not the wall poly- 
chromy of the Italians, their architects were 
no less fond of colour, and they found in 
large traceried windows generally, and often 
exaggerated clerestories in particular, a field 
for the application of colour on a large scale. 
That with which the Italians covered their 
walls, their Northern contemporaries placed 
in their windows. 

The same feeling appears in the tracery. 
In Italian churches there is generally little 
of it to be seen, and where it exists it is far 
inferior to that to which we are accustomed 
in England and France. The tracery of 
Italy, with its heavy intervals between the 
openings, seemed designed, as no doubt it 
often was, to exclude the light, and thus the 
very reason for the existence of the window 
was lost. The lack of an adequate clere- 
story, partly from reasons of climate and 
partly from the views adopted by Italian 
architects, is, to a Northern eye, a notable 
defect in their churches. The pleasing gra- 
dation of height, from aisle to nave, is ab- 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

sent, and in its place there is heaviness and 
want of variety. 

But if to one who has grown up with a 
love for that elegance of proportion and that 
beauty of well-considered detail which al- 
most everywhere satisfy the mind in con- 
templating the great churches of France and 
England — the majority of Italian Gothic 
ones appear cold and unmeaning because 
their authors were unable either to compre- 
hend or to imitate the true principles of 
Pointed architecture — there exist churches, 
and portions of churches, which claim our 
highest admiration. 

Among these must be named: St. An- 
drew's at Vercelli; the Duomo at Como; 
the chapel of Sta. Maria della Spina at 
Pisa; the west fronts of Monza, Orvieto 
and Siena Cathedrals, and the upper part 
of that at Ferrara; the forest of gigantic 
statue-crowned columns of Milan; the west 
door of Sta. Anastasia, and the nave arcades 
of the Cathedral at Verona; and the double 
church of St. Francis at Assisi, which, if of 
somewhat dubious parentage, is invaluable 
as an example of to what extent colour may 
be profitably carried, for this graceful build- 



29 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ing depends on this much more than on its 
architecture for its magnificence and char- 
acter. 

Then there are the exquisite porches such 
as that at Bergamo; the peculiar and gen- 
erally noble campanili; the many-shafted 
cloisters; the perfect monuments; the use 
of brickwork of the best kind; and lastly, 
that in which Italian architecture of the 
Middle Ages teaches us more than any other 
architecture since the commencement of the 
world, the introduction of colour in con- 
struction. With such consummate beauty, 
refinement and modesty is it managed that 
even where it accompanies faulty construc- 
tion and sham expedients it is impossible to 
help devoting oneself altogether to admira- 
tion of the result. 

The two great Venetian churches of SS. 
Giovanni e Paolo and Sta. Maria Gloriosa 
de' Frari, built by the Dominicans and 
Franciscans respectively, are entitled to more 
than passing notice here. They are so nearly 
contemporary that they may be advanta- 
geously compared. Neither displays any 
very striking evidence of the wealth or pride 
in which Venice was rapidly rising to the 



30 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

height of glory, for, although grandly di- 
mensioned — each is nearly 300 feet long by 
150 broad, i.e., at the transepts — they are 
entirely of brick, with the exception of their 
great circular columns, which, compared 
with the graceful clusters of shafts that were 
being employed by the English and French 
architects, appear somewhat clumsy; while 
both externally and internally they are al- 
most devoid of ornament. Their plans, too, 
are very similar, being cruciform with a 
short eastern limb, terminating in an apse, 
and with the transepts projecting boldly be- 
yond the line of the nave aisles. The Frari 
Church has three chapels opening out of 
either transept, St. Giovanni has two. In 
the former the seven apses are all built with 
an angle on the axis, the great apse having 
six sides and the transeptal ones two apiece; 
whereas in the latter the choir apse has seven 
and those projecting from the transepts five 
each. In the church of Sta. Maria de' 
Frari, the great, round columns, reminiscent 
of Low Country architecture, and the high 
close rood-screen, a vara avis in Italian ec- 
clesiology, form the most conspicuous and 
interesting objects. Externally its apse may 



31 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

be regarded as one of the most successful 
specimens of thirteenth-century transalpine 
Gothic, which is saying a great deal. 

I alluded just now to Vercelli. Situated 
on the Sesia, at its junction with the Cantu- 
ana, Vercelli forms a convenient point de 
depart for a group of North-Western cities 
which, including Asti, Novara and Casale 
Monferrato, are too frequently overlooked 
by the traveller from Milan to Turin or 
vice versa. The walls of Vercelli, which on 
the northern side of the city run close up to 
the railway, have been demolished, and their 
site is now occupied by shady boulevards, 
from which fine views of the Alps, includ- 
ing Monte Rosa, can be obtained; while, 
scattered about in the different churches, 
examples may be seen of the work of Gau- 
denzio Ferrari, one of the principal orna- 
ments of the Vercelli school of painting 
which flourished in the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries, and to which belonged also 
Giovenoni, Defendenti Ferrari, Lanini and, 
we may almost add, Bazzi, who was a Ver- 
cellese. 

As the train enters the station, the eye is 
gladdened by one of the most wonderful 
pieces of architectural grouping in Northern 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Italy — the Early Gothic church of St. An- 
drew, a pile which would hardly seem out 
of place on Teutonic soil, for it is the pos- 
sessor of three towers, besides a semi-de- 
tached campanile of later date, whereas it is 
the rule in Italy to find but one. 

The style of St. Andrew's at Vercelli ex- 
ternally is a mingling of the round-arched 
and the Pointed. In plan it is cruciform, 
with a central and western towers, and two 
apsidal chapels opening out of either tran- 
sept — an arrangement found in English 
buildings at Buildwas, Kirkstall and other 
churches of this class and size, only that 
in England they are generally square. Of 
these chapels at Vercelli the inner one is a 
little longer than the outer. In addition to 
the towers above-mentioned, there is a very 
noble late fourteenth-century campanile, 
surmounted by small angle turrets and a 
well-proportioned, but not lofty, octagonal 
spire. This campanile is neither wholly 
attached to nor wholly detached from the 
church, and is so placed as not to stand 
parallel with any part of the building. 
This, however, is no detriment, but rather 
lends an added charm to a group whose 
grandeur would perhaps have been en- 
33 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

hanced had greater bulk been given to the 
western pair of towers, which, instead of be- 
ing engaged at the ends of the aisles, project 
beyond them as at Wells and Rouen. The 
central steeple is composed of a greater, sur- 
mounted by a lesser octagon, capped by a 
low spire of the same shape. 

Red brick is the material mainly em- 
ployed, but in the arcades surrounding the 
upper parts of the church, and in the west- 
ern fagade, cut stone of a hard quality and 
bluish hue combines with the other mate- 
rial to produce a very pleasing harmony of 
natural colour. 

Three deeply recessed doorways with 
round arches, one rose window, and two 
rows of arcades, ornament the west front, 
which, Lombard fashion, is divided into 
three portions by shallow buttresses not 
reaching to the top of the gable. This last 
is very plain, the two rows of arcades above 
alluded to not following its line as is usually 
the case in early buildings of this part of 
Italy. Along the north and south sides solid 
and ponderous brick buttresses are carried 
down the lean-to roofs of the aisles at the 
distance of each bay. The aisle windows are 
simple blunt-headed lancets placed high up 
34 



VERCELLI 
St. Andrews 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

in the walls; those of the clerestory, which 
is low, being spanned by shallow arches. A 
graceful, continuous arcade, corresponding 
to the lower one of the fagade, surmounts 
the clerestory, but it plays no part whatever 
in the elevation of the interior, being intro- 
duced merely to mask .the walling of the 
space between the inner vault of brick and 
the outer roof of tiles, which, as is usual in 
Italy, is very low pitched. 

Within, the church has all the character- 
istics of a Northern Gothic building of the 
beginning of the thirteenth century. Its six 
graceful nave arches of red brick, as well as 
the variegated ones spanning the nave and 
aisles transversely, or forming the ribs of 
the quadripartite vaulting, are pointed and 
borne on slender shafts whose foliaged caps 
hardly bespeak the hand of an Italian. We 
miss, however, the string-courses and tri- 
foria, a blank wall-space alone intervening 
between the tops of the nave arcades and the 
clerestory windows, which are blunt-headed 
lancets placed high up right under the vault- 
ing cells. Such defects will perhaps only 
present themselves to the eyes of those who 
have grown up with a love for the more 
perfect elevations of an English or a French 
35 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

church, and look as though St. Andrew's 
had caught the breath of Germany, where 
the absence of a triforium in early Gothic 
buildings is of frequent occurrence. 

Still on the whole this church at Vercelli 
must be considered as unrivalled in purity 
among transalpine buildings of its period, 
so much so as to make us throw doubts upon 
its being an Italian work at all, more espe- 
cially when we learn that its reputed archi- 
tect was one Brigwithe, whom the Cardinal 
Gualo brought back with him to erect a 
church in this his native place. 

At Novara, a bright, pleasant city about 
an hour's ride from Vercelli, and situated 
on a hill rising 545 feet above sea level, 
from a plain between the Sesia and the Po, 
the Lombardo-Romanesque cathedral dis- 
appeared during the middle of the last cen- 
tury to give place to the present church, a 
vast and lofty pile in the Italianized variety 
of Corinthian, the detached baptistery alone 
being spared. It is from the designs of An- 
tonelli, to whom we likewise owe that 
Pelion-on-Ossa-like central steeple which, 
quite ruining the effect of the elegant north- 
eastern campanile, now surmounts the six- 
teenth-century Renaissance church of St. 
36 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Gaudentio in the same city. Grand and im- 
posing as is the interior of the present No- 
vara Cathedral/ with its truly noble nave 
arcade of tall fluted Corinthian columns, it 
scarcely consoles us for the loss of the old 
Duomo, which, to judge from the plans, sec- 
tions and elevations given by Osten in his 
Bauwerke in der Lomhardei, must have 
been of unusual interest, however greatly it 
may have suffered from injudicious post- 
Gothic accretions which it only required a 
conservative hand to remove. The place of 
the old atrium or forecourt has been usurped 
by an elegant but cold Corinthian colon- 
nade,^ from whose western ambulatory we 
pass into the happily-spared baptistery. A 
work in all probability of the pre-Carolin- 
gian period, it is chiefly remarkable as con- 
taining the germ of those external galleries 
under the eaves of the roof which latterly 
formed so beautiful and characteristic a 

* The breadth of the nave is fifty-two feet, that of either aisle 
twenty-five feet. The choir, of the same width as the nave, 
has no aisles. 

' The eastern side of this quadrangle is formed by the im- 
posing Corinthian portico of the Cathedral. On the other 
three sides a triple row of columns divides the ambulatory into 
two avenues, the outer one on the north being extended along 
that side of the nave with very picturesque effect. 

37 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

feature of the Lombardo-Romanesque style. 
Unlike the Baptistery at Asti, where we find 
an octagonal centre of modest dimensions 
surrounded by a very wide aisle describing 
a complete circle, that at Novara has its 
dome supported on the external wall, and 
in a decorative sense, upon eight columns 
placed in its angles. These columns also 
support the arches by which the wall is 
pierced, and which admit alternately to 
semicircular apses and quadrilateral chap- 
els, several of which contain groups il- 
lustrating scenes from the Passion of our 
Lord, whose terribly realistic treatment is 
intensified by the gloomy solemnity of this 
little building. 

The Asti Baptistery attached to the 
Church of St. Pietro in Concava ^ is sug- 
gestive at first sight of St. Sepulchre's, at 
Northampton, England. Eight round- 
headed arches on stout, cylindrical columns 
of stone, regularly banded with brick, sup- 

^ From a board suspended in this wretched little modernized 
church I copied the following table of Psalms and Hymns 
used every Sunday and festival at Vespers throughout the 
year: Salmi ed inni per Vesperi nelle domintche e feste fra 
Vanno: Dixit Dominus ; Laudate Pueri; Lcetatus sum in 
his; Nisi Dominus; Lauda Jerusalem; Ave Maris Stella; 
Magnificat. 

38 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

port the drum of the octagon, which, as it is 
unpierced by windows or arcades opening 
into a gallery, has a peculiarly gloomy ef- 
fect, while those in the broad circumscribing 
aisle are so small that even in Italy the in- 
terior must always have been in comparative 
darkness. This Baptistery at Asti affords a 
very complete idea, on a small scale, of 
Lombard architecture in the beginning of 
the eleventh century, when it had completely 
emancipated itself from the classic influence, 
but had not yet begun to combine the newly 
invented forms with that grace and beauty 
which marks such a finished example as the 
circular part of the church of St. Tomaso 
in Limine a few miles from Bergamo. 

In this building, which for the propriety 
and elegance of its design is perhaps unsur- 
passed, we find the addition of an upper 
arcade or triforium of the same height as 
that below, which with the dome and its 
little cupola raises the whole height to about 
fifty feet. Eastwards, a small choir projects, 
terminating in a semicircular apse. As in 
Germany and England the circular part of 
this church of St. Tomaso in Limine forms 
the nave, whereas in France it is always the 
sanctum, sanctorum. 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

To these examples of round churches I 
would add Sta. Julia and the Duomo Vec- 
chia at Brescia, the latter, to the credit of 
the builders of the new cathedral hard by — 
a structure that takes no very high rank 
among works of the Italian Renaissance — 
being left standing. Had the same discre- 
tion been shown in other places, Italy would 
be able to present a far greater number of 
monuments of early times than she does at 
present, as, for instance, at Bergamo, Bo- 
logna, Pavia, Ravenna and Vercelli, where 
medieval churches have given place to unin- 
teresting specimens of Revived Classic. 

To sum up conclusions as to the merits of 
Italian Gothic, and as to the practical les- 
sons which we may derive from it. The 
palm may be given unhesitatingly to the 
Northern developments of the style, and we 
may consider that a lingering reminiscence 
of classical forms and beauties incapacitated 
the Italians from doing full justice to the 
new architecture. To this cause we must 
attribute their simultaneous use of the round 
and pointed arch, and the indisposition to 
avail themselves of the constructive advan- 
tages of the latter form, because they would 
never allow the full use of the buttress. 
40 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Their aim of preserving the repose of their 
buildings prevented them from using the 
buttress, which is thought by many to be 
symbolical of life, vigour and action. 
Hence their pointed arches were used more 
for ornament than for constructive reasons, 
and so were designed in proportions which 
required, even from the first, the support of 
iron ties from impost to impost. To this 
very weakness may not unreasonably be at- 
tributed the beautiful trefoil-headed form 
of so many Italian arches. The prevalence 
of the ogee form may have been derived 
through Venice from the East. 

In the frequent, and indeed almost ex- 
clusive, use of the bearing shaft and square 
abacus, we find another trace of classic in- 
fluence, but a beauty which has been not 
unsuccessfully grafted upon the English 
Gothic. The deep, external cornices, the 
plate-tracery of windows, the severity of 
internal detail and the simplicity of groin- 
ing are other Italian characteristics. Upon 
the whole we may learn much from the 
Italian style as to simplicity and repose of 
efifect. 

With such failures before their eyes as the 
Cathedrals of Florence and Milan, and the 
41 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Church of St. Petronio at Bologna, it is no 
wonder that, dissatisfied with their own pro- 
ductions in Complete Gothic, the Italians 
should have quickly abandoned a style 
which was not indigenous and never fully 
naturalized, for one which was their own, 
invented in their country, and suited to their 
character and requirements; so much so, 
that whatever little inconvenience might 
arise from its adoption was more than com- 
pensated for by the memories which each 
detail evoked, and the attempt to rehabilitate 
which, was the guiding idea of all the as- 
pirations of the age. This being so, it is 
easy to see how soon after a brief intermix- 
ture of the Gothic and Classic, as evidenced 
in such works as the Capella Colleoni at- 
tached to Sta. Maria Maggiore at Ber- 
gamo * and the western f agades of the Cer- 
tosa, near Pavia, and Santa Zaccaria at 

^ The front of this Colleoni Chapel, in the transition from 
the Lombard to the Cinquecento style, shows a splendid central 
rose in the midst of the most extraordinary and crowded assem- 
blage of small arches, columns, pilasters, balustrades and 
trellis work, all covered over with the richest embroidery of 
sculpture spread on a ground inlaid in white, red and black 
marble, the whole producing one of the most charming ex- 
hibitions of external polychromatic ornamentation produced 
by natural means. 

42 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Venice, the ancient Roman architecture 
superseded the medieval, and at a time when 
the revival of Roman literature recalled the 
recollection of the greatest nation that Italy, 
and in some respects the world, had ever 
seen. Sooner or later it must have come to 
this, but practically the change was intro- 
duced by two of the most remarkable men 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries pro- 
duced, Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Bat- 
tista Alberti. 

The two architects above named were the 
pioneers of the movement, and although they 
certainly worked more under the influence 
of Gothic principles than their successors, 
still in their works may be found germs of 
many architectural heresies. 

Brunelleschi completed the dome of the 
Cathedral at Florence that had been left un- 
finished by Arnolfo and Giotto without even 
a drawing to show how they intended to 
complete it. 

He also completed St. Lorenzo at Flor- 
ence and entirely built St. Spirito in the 
same city of his birth, and the little octago- 
nal church Degli Angeli. 

Alberti's best known and most admired 
work is St. Francesco at Rimini, whose 
43 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

fagade, had it been completed, would have 
been equal to anything of Palladio. 

The not very happy church of St. Andrea 
at Mantua, also due to Alberti, may be ac- 
cepted as the type of all those churches 
which have been built in Italy from St. 
Peter's at Rome downwards during the last 
four centuries, and indeed throughout Eu- 
rope. 

It was in St. Andrea at Mantua that the 
coffered wagon vault, of which a noble ex- 
ample may be seen in St. Paul's Cathedral 
at the junction of the dome with the nave, 
choir and transepts, made its reappearance. 
Then, coming down to a later period, we 
find the Church of the Madonna di Cam- 
pagna built early in the sixteenth century 
from the designs of Sanmichele at the vil- 
lage from which he derived his name, near 
Verona; the Cathedral at Pavia, begun in 
1488 on a grand scale from the designs of 
Cristoforo Rocchi, a pupil of Bramante, but 
left in a sadly incomplete state; Sta. Giu- 
stina at Padua, a truly noble work com- 
menced in 1502 from the designs of Padre 
Girolamo da Brescia, and completed half 
a century later under Andrea Morone; Sta. 
Maria in Porto at Ravenna, built in 1553 
44 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

out of the materials of the church of St. 
Lorenzo in Cesarea; St. Gaudentio at No- 
vara, rebuilt in 1577 on the site of a much 
older church, by Pellegrini; the Madonna 
della Steccata at Parma, begun about 1521 
from the plans of Francesco Zaccagni; Sta. 
Maria della Salute at Venice by Baldassare 
Longhena; and the choir of the Cathedral 
at Bologna, by Domenico Tibaldi, both dat- 
ing from the early part of the seventeenth 
century. 

All these churches which I have selected 
as being unusually fine examples of the re- 
vived classical styles, prove how completely 
their architects had rejected all Gothic feel- 
ing, while adhering in most cases to the old 
cruciform and apsidal Gothic plan, and how 
thoroughly they had mastered that peculiar 
application of classical details to modern 
purposes which formed the staple of archi- 
tectural art in Europe for the succeeding 
two centuries. 

In Italy the revived Italian style was 
really revived. It was not, in its earlier 
stages at least, a cold and formal imitation 
of the antique, no tame aping of classicality, 
but seizing upon its principles and animated 
by its spirit, those concerned in its resuscita- 
45 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tion took into account the exigencies of the 
period, forming new combinations as re- 
quired. 

It should not, however, be forgotten that 
a great many medieval churches were so 
transformed during the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries and so disfigured as to their 
ancient details as to leave considerable doubt 
as to their antiquity. 

Every Italian city presents, unhappily, 
numerous examples of this mischievous 
process. Time after time, after surveying 
a graceful Pointed fagade or a Romanesque 
apse and central lantern, did I enter to find 
myself confronted with one of those vicious 
specimens of the later revived classical 
school, which in the course of the eighteenth 
century had covered, not Italy alone, but 
those parts of the countries adjacent to it, 
with absurdities in the baroque style, which 
from their constant occurrence became abso- 
lutely wearisome.* 

' Unfortunately, this mischievous process was not confined 
to Italy, but spread in post-Tridentine times to Southern 
Germany and Austria, where many a fine old Romanesque 
cathedral and church fell a victim to the mania for Italianizing 
everything. In Northern Germany Hildesheim and Fulda 
Cathedrals were completely metamorphosed internally, while 
in France the mischief showed itself chiefly in the demolition 

46 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

It was my intention to close this brief 
sketch of Christian architecture in Italy with 
a dissection of their churches, showing how 
in their several parts they differ from those 
of other European countries; but the dif- 
ficulty of compressing such details within 
prescribed limits has been found so great, 
that wellnigh all reference to their develop- 
ment, furniture and so forth must be de- 
ferred to the succeeding chapters, in which, 
by taking the reader to the buildings them- 
selves, I shall endeavour to convey a clearer 
idea of their character by a description of 
their leading features. 

of medieval jubes and the substitution of semi-pagan mon- 
strosities. 

Thanks, perhaps, in some measure to the Reformation, 
and to insular prejudice, the ancient ecclesiastical buildings 
of England escaped the scourge. 



47 



CHAPTER II 

VERONA 

Verona, which was reached at five 
o'clock on a lovely June afternoon, a few 
fleecy clouds alone relieving the true Italian 
blue of the sky, is partly situated on the 
Adige, partly on the declivity of a hill, 
which forms the last swell of the Alps, and 
partly on the skirts of an immense plain 
extending from these mountains to the 
Apennines. The river, which divides 
Verona into two equal parts, sweeps through 
it with rapid current in a bold curve forming 
a peninsula, within which the whole of the 
ancient and the greater part of the modern 
city is enclosed.* The hills behind the city 

^ Verona Athesi circumflua — Verona by the encircling 
Adige bound. — Silius Italicus. 

This river has on many occasions brought woe to the city. 
During a stroll along the Corso Cavour, I stopped to read 
such inscriptions as these on the posts of doorways, " Hue 
usque aqua inundavit, 1567;" ditto, III Oct. MDCXII; 
ditto, 31 Oct. MDCXVII; ditto, Sept. 1767; ditto, 1865. 

48 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

are rich in villas and gardens where the 
graceful cypress and the tall poplar predom- 
inate over the bushy ilex and spreading 
laurel. The plains before the city are 
streaked with rows of mulberry trees, and 
shaded with vines climbing from branch to 
branch, and spreading in garlands from tree 
to tree, just as they used to do in Virgil's 
day: 

Viminibus salices fecundae frondibus ulmi, 
At myrtus validis hastilibus et bona bello 
Cornus; Ituraeos taxi torquentur in arcus. 

Georg., Lib. il. 

I alighted at the Porta Vecchia station, 
and dispensing with the services of the mul- 
tifarious vehicles drawn up outside it, shoul- 
dered my knapsack and walked up into the 
city, presently emerging upon the pictur- 
esque Piazza delle Erbe. Here a restaurant 
of inviting appearance presenting itself, I 
inquired whether a camera da letto was to 
be had, and being answered in the affirmative, 
desired to be shown to it forthwith. Ac- 
cordingly I was ushered upstairs to, and pro- 
vided for two liras a day with, as delightful 
a bed-sitting-room as could be wished for, 
its windows commanding the picturesque 
market far down below where the many- 
49 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

hued umbrellas composed quite a brilliant 
parterre, and where a piano organ was play- 
ing La mia Letizia; so that I felt now that 
I really was in Italy, and for the first time 
too. Some ablutions having been per- 
formed, and the dust of a long afternoon's 
travel brushed off, I hastened to mingle with 
the busy throng below, and, for the evening 
at least, to enjoy a stroll about the city in a 
vague and experimental manner, taking 
churches, palaces, gateways, piazzas, public 
gardens and all the other delights of an 
Italian city as they should present them- 
selves; insomuch that I retired to bed, after 
a very pleasurable reconnoitre, completed 
by a cool ramble by the side of the Adige, 
to dream of amber-coloured curtains wa- 
ving in the evening breeze at Giottoesque 
portals; of lamps and candles reflected in 
marble pavements; of graceful campanili 
whence the melody of bells seemed to be 
ever floating over this city of brick and 
marble; and of glimpses caught through 
gateways of sleepy courtyards having stately 
palaces within, as silent as tombs. 

Three old cities, far apart across the 
whole breadth of a continent, enable us to 
form a fair idea of what the whole of Europe 
50 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

may have been in the palmy days of the 
Middle Ages. They are Liibeck, Nurem- 
berg and Verona. Each tells its own tale; 
each is stamped with the influence of na- 
tional peculiarity; and each is remarkable, 
inter alia, the one as the city of brickwork, 
the second as that of stone, and the last as 
that of marble. In Liibeck nothing but 
brick was ever seen; in Nuremberg stone 
was used with an excellence seldom rivalled, 
whilst in Verona, though brick was most 
skilfully manipulated, the great aim of its 
architects was ever to introduce the marbles 
in which the district was so rich, with the 
result that the natural polychromatic treat- 
ment of her churches constitutes one of their 
most enchanting features. 

Of the materials in which the neighbour- 
hood of Verona is so rich may be named a 
fine limestone, a close-grained cream-col- 
oured and a rich, mottled red marble, all 
of which are largely used, not only in 
Verona, but also in Venice and other cities 
of the province. The same quarry produces 
both kinds, and indeed the same block is 
sometimes half red and half white. Here 
are to be found grouped several varieties of 
Italian Gothic — the Lombard, the Floren- 
51 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tine and the Venetian. To the first must be 
assigned the noble basilica of St. Zeno and a 
large part of the Cathedral, both of which 
were mainly rebuilt in the twelfth century. 
Each is a noble specimen of the Lombard 
style, with few single light windows and 
with the walls decorated externally by a 
series of pilasters, and by alternating bands 
of red and white in stone or brick. The 
arches of this period are semicircular, and 
rest on round columns and capitals richly 
carved with grotesque figures and foliage. 
Most of the external ornamentation is usu- 
ally concentrated on the western front, which 
here, as well as in the later fagades of 
Parma, Piacenza, Cremona and Modena, 
has often a lofty arched porch on marble 
columns resting on griffins or lions devour- 
ing their prey. To the Florentine period 
belong Sta. Anastasia; the adjacent elegant 
little chapel of St. Pietro Martire, upon 
which Ruskin has passed so high a eulo- 
gium; the porches of St. Fermo Maggiore 
and Sta. Eufemia; several more or less 
mutilated palaces; and the tombs of the 
Scaligers outside the Church of Sta. Maria 
Antica. 
The Venetian period was one of little 
52 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

vigour or originality at Verona, the build- 
ings of this date, 1400- 1480, being to a great 
extent tame copies of Venetian examples. 

The Early Renaissance developed into 
very exceptional beauty in Verona mainly 
through the genius of Fra Giocondo (1435- 
15 14), a native, who was at first a friar in 
the monastery of Sta. Maria in Organo. 
He rose to great celebrity as an architect, 
and designed many graceful and richly 
sculptured buildings in Venice, Rome, and 
even in France, using classical forms with 
no little taste and skill, combining them with 
much of the freedom of the older medieval 
architects. In rich and delicate sculptured 
decorations he chiefly excelled. 

The Roman Gateway of Gallienus sup- 
plied a special form of window with a cir- 
cular arch on pilasters surmounted by a cor- 
nice. This was copied by Fra Giocondo, and 
has been used by countless architects down 
to the present day with little or no variation, 
a remarkable history for a design. It was 
invented in the third century, revived in 
the fifteenth and again copied in the nine- 
teenth. 

Another of the leading architects of the 
next stage of the Renaissance was the Vero- 
53 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

nese Michele Sanmichele whose works are 
the chief embellishment of this ancient city. 

Sanmichele was a great military engineer, 
and designer of an immense number of fine 
palaces, not only in Verona, but in other 
Venetian cities. In the city of his birth 
specimens of Sanmichele's work may be seen 
in the Church of St. Giorgio and the marble 
screens which enclose the choirs of the Ca- 
thedral and St. Fermo. 

Though stately and graceful in propor- 
tion, the works of this architect show a ten- 
dency towards that dull scholastic classicism 
which, in the hands of Palladio at the neigh- 
bouring city of Vicenza, put an end to all 
real life in the art. 

The campanile had been my constant com- 
panion all the way from Trent, but it was 
not until Verona was reached that I was 
enabled to make its closer acquaintance. 
Seen at a distance, there is a monotony about 
this feature of Italian church architecture 
which we never, or rarely, find about the 
towers of Northern peoples; yet when we 
come to examine it more closely, we find 
that, notwithstanding a sameness in the gen- 
eral scheme, there is generally a very great 
variety in its treatment, and when on our 
54 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

return home we conjure up our recollections 
of the Italian churches, there is perhaps no 
feature which is remembered with greater 
pleasure than the campanile. Usually an 
Italian church, whether of the Romanesque, 
Pointed or Renaissance periods, has only a 
single campanile. It is extremely rare to 
find such a group of towers as so frequently 
occurs in Germany. Had the Italian archi- 
tects built churches with pairs of towers at- 
tached to the fagades, and lantern towers on 
the crossings, the distant view of many a 
Lombard, Veronese or Venetian city would 
undoubtedly have been more striking than 
it is. In its simplest form the campanile has 
a grandeur and a unity of expression pro- 
ductive of a very dignified effect at a very 
slight expenditure of ornamentation; what 
at once distinguishes it from the tower which 
follows Northern models being its height 
and absence of buttresses. The usual mode 
of ascent is by a staircase in the thickness of 
the wall, thus obviating the necessity of any 
such excrescence as a turret; the outline 
therefore assumes a severely square and sim- 

I pie character. Not only is it from the ab- 
sence of buttresses, but from the presence of 

J those horizontal lines which seem to bind the 
55 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

building together, that the height of an Ital- 
ian campanile is increased. The fault some- 
times found with the beautiful Angel Tower 
at Canterbury, England, is the want of the 
latter feature. In the towers of Italy such 
lines always more or less prevail, their archi- 
tects seeming never to have forgotten the 
marked horizontal feeling of the classic or- 
ders, the examples of which were constantly 
before their eyes. The tall, slender, unbut- 
tressed tower, with its mid-wall shafts in the 
belfry stage, with its ornaments, if it has 
any, confined to flat pilasters and arcades, 
is the tower common to all Western Europe 
up to the eleventh century. We find it in 
England, in Southern France, notably along 
the banks of the Saone, and all over Ger- 
many, from the Falls of the Rhine to the 
mouth of the Elbe. But Italy is its home, 
and it is in Italy alone that we can study its 
origin and meaning. 

As regards position, the campanile stands 
either placed in contact with the exterior 
wall of the side aisle or at a little distance 
from it, or else it surmounts one of the com- 
partments of the aisles. But, wherever it is, 
it always seems to have been planted wher- 
ever it happened to be most convenient, and 
56 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

with but little reference to its effect upon the 
remainder of the building. A fine example 
of the simple grandeur to which the cam- 
panile sometimes attains is presented by that 
of St. Giacomo di Rialto at Venice. Here 
there are two very lofty stages, each arcaded 
with two sunk arches on each face, and di- 
vided by a stone string-course. The arches 
have a trefoiled cusping and labels moulded 
with an enrichment of nail heads. The 
highest stage has a large open arch on each 
face, under which it was no doubt intended 
to place the bells in the Italian fashion by 
which they can be seen as well as heard from 
below. In this example, as in others I have 
observed, the great charm is the extreme 
simplicity of the whole design. At the same 
time there is nothing mean or paltry about 
it, the scale and the solidity of workmanship 
being both very great. There are several 
classes or schools of campanili, as, e. g., the 
Pisan, the Venetian and Veronese, the Gen- 
oese and the Florentine. As it is with the 
second of these classes that the present chap- 
ter is most concerned, a few words on their 
respective peculiarities may not be out of 
place. 
The Venetian and Veronese campanili are 
57 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

somewhat different. The former have gen- 
erally less subdivisions into stages than those 
of the Pisan group, being arcaded with very 
slightly recessed lofty arcades. 

I have already mentioned one of the best 
examples of this kind of tower — St. Gia- 
como di Rialto — executed, as are all the 
Venetian examples, in brick. The tower of 
St. Zeno at Verona is similar in idea, being 
entirely unpierced with openings until near 
the summit, where it has two low stages, 
each pierced with an arcade of three com- 
partments. In all these examples the pilas- 
ters at the angles are distinctly marked, and 
their general finish is by a low spire, often, 
as in the Veronese churches of Sta. Ana- 
stasia, St. Fermo, St. Lorenzo, Sta. Maria 
Antica, and St. Zeno, circular in plan with 
angle pinnacles at the base, and constructed 
with bricks moulded with a circular end, 
treatment which imparts to them a cone-like 
appearance. Sometimes we find an octagonal 
termination to the campanili, as in the 
churches of the Frari and Sta. Fosca at Ven- 
ice. At Padua the low pyramidal capping 
is very frequent, occurring also in the noble 
Lombardic Romanesque basilicas of St. Am- 
brose at Milan, and St. Michele at Pavia. 
58 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The campanili of Piacenza, Parma and 
Pavia Cathedrals, and those of Modena and 
Cremona — called respectively ha Ghirlan- 
dina and II Torrazzo — may be accepted as 
four of the finest and most imposing exam- 
ples of this feature in their various forms. 

Bells for summoning to worship were 
scarcely known in Europe till the close of 
the sixth century, and were then first heard 
in monasteries. In primitive times the faith- 
ful used to be apprised, from day to day, of 
the hours for religious assembly by their 
ministers addressing congregations; or in 
some cloisters by the sound of a trumpet 
breaking on the silence of the cell at the 
hour of prayer. 

We seem to perceive an allusion to this 
practice in the seventh verse of the Sunday 
morning hymn, Omnes una celebremus: 

In eadem sumitur 
Tuba evangelii 
Praedicandi populo. 

The Italian terms campana, campanile, orig- 
inate in a tradition, not now admitted, that 
the first sacred bells were heard at Nola in 
the Neapolitan province of Campania, now 
Terra di Lavoro. Towers began to be built 
for the reception of bells soon after their 
59 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

introduction in the sixth century. The ear- 
liest known instance occurs about A. D. 560 
at Merida in Portugal; but the first belfry 
was not raised in Rome till about the year 
770. It was ordered by Pope Stephen III 
and was raised beside the great basilica of 
St. Peter. It is probable that the campanili 
of the Ravenna churches were not originally 
built for the reception of bells, as they ap- 
pear to be contemporary, or at any rate very 
little subsequent to the basilicas whose posi- 
tions they indicate. The beautiful form of 
blessing, popularly called the baptizing, of 
bells was inserted in the Pontifical in the 
course of the eighth century; and as the 
religious use of these instruments for exci- 
ting memories or devotion became multifari- 
ous, bells were introduced, first in the elev- 
enth century at the most solemn passages in 
rites, and in processions at marriages and 
funerals; and were ordered in 1095 t>y Ur- 
ban II to be rung before sunrise and sun- 
set, for inviting all to pray by the chimes, 
called, from the first words in the orison 
appointed, the Angelus and the Ave Maria. 
It is Whit-Sunday, and an Italian summer 
morning. The waking thought that it was 
to be kept at Verona was transport! I do 
60 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

not think my eyes ever opened upon so 
lovely a day. The sky was without a speck; 
and the air just seemed to me to steep every 
nerve and fibre of the frame with repose and 
pleasure. Early I was astir, and after a 
ramble of three hours amid churches, and 
many a shady viotollo of white houses mood- 
ily frowning at the other houses over the 
way, returned by the side of the turbulent 
Adige to an alfresco breakfast in the Piazza 
delle Erbe — so fanciful, quaint and pictur- 
esque, formed by an extraordinary and rich 
variety of fantastic buildings, and dominated 
by the campanile of the Piazza dei Signori, 
a magnificent, simple and unbroken piece of 
brickwork nearly three hundred feet high. 

The meal concluded, I sought the Du- 
omo* for High Mass. The marble pave- 
ment of the nave was railed off from the 
rood-screen to the west door, just inside 
which, on the floor, the eye was caught by 
the text chosen by the saintly Keble for the 
title page of his Christian Year — " In pa- 
tientia vestra possidebitis animas vestras." 

* Duomo, the Italian equivalent for cathedral, is derived 
from the Latin vpord Domus, which was usually applied to 
churches par excellence. The cupola generally prevailing in 
old churches obtained the name of Dome. 

61 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Inquiry as to why the centre of the nave 
was thus barricaded elicited the information 
that the Cardinal Bishop of Verona would 
administer the Sacrament of Confirmation 
at the conclusion of the morning offices. 

At half-past nine Terce was sung by the 
canons in the apse and by a choir of men 
and boys in the garb of every-day life in the 
gallery, before the organ which, in accord- 
ance with almost universal usage in Italy, is 
placed above the stalls. At Verona, and in- 
deed in many another great Italian church, 
there are two organs thus situated, the cases 
of which are truly magnificent, being flanked 
by two lofty Corinthian columns, while the 
pipes are protected by painted shutters, 
thrown back when the instrument is in use. 

While Terce was in progress, the candles 
surmounting Sanmichele's beautiful but not 
incongruous Ionic marble screen, were 
lighted, their feeble rays being dimmed by 
the great shafts of sunlight which streamed 
in through the southern windows. 

The psalms were most interesting, the 
verses being sung alternately to the plain 
chant by the canons, and in concerted parts 
by the choir in the gallery, not however, I 
thought, with much feeling or delicacy. 
62 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Terce having concluded with the hymn 
Vent Creator Spiritus ^ and the versicles and 
responses proper for Whit-Sunday, a proces- 
sion entered. 

It was not large, but could hardly have 
been more picturesque, comprising as it did 
the cross- and taper-bearers, a few persons 
in cassocks and not very becoming surplices, 
the Bishop of Verona in his robes as cardi- 
nal and his two domestic attendants, remark- 
ably handsome men in dark blue coats, lace 
cravats, white silk knee-breeches, and stock- 
ings set ofif by shoes from which gleamed 
silver buckles. 

The procession did not at once enter the 
choir but passed across the Cathedral to a 
chapel in the south aisle, where the Bishop 
offered up some preliminary devotions. 

The Bishop was to pontificate, and while 
he was being vested in red chasuble, mitre, 

^ There seems little reason to doubt that this hymn was the 
composition of Charlemagne. That Emperor was almost as 
much renowned for his scholarship as for his military achieve- 
ments, and it is remarkable that the frame and diction of this 
ever-famous hymn quite fall back on the older and correct 
models. As a slight corroborative piece of internal evidence, 
it may be observed that Charlemagne was much interested 
in the propagation of the Filioque doctrine, and that the last 
verse but one goes out of its way to introduce it. 

63 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

etc., the choir up in the organ gallery sang 
the Introit: "The Spirit of the Lord filleth 
the world, Alleluia! and that which con- 
taineth all things hath knowledge of the 
voice"; not, however, to the ancient plain 
chant with which I was so familiar, but to 
a setting in concerted parts. 

The congregation at the beginning of 
High Mass was a very scanty one, but as 
the office proceeded it was augmented by the 
arrival of the confirmees with their parents 
and guardians, who, after a good deal of 
struggling, pushing and trafficking in chairs,^ 
were arranged in order behind the barriers, 
which, as already stated, lined the nave on 
either side from the choir screen to the west 
door. None of the children could have been 
over ten years of age. 

The dresses of the girls were, many of 
them, strikingly pretty, so that when some- 
thing like order had been established among 
as fidgety a congregation of little people as 
ever I remember, the scene was remarkably 

* The naves of Italian cathedrals and churches are not 
seated permanently like those of France. The chairs are kept 
in side chapels and elsewhere, and only brought out when 
wanted, an arrangement occasioning much confusion and 
unrest. 

64 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

picturesque. One drawback was the absence 
of hymn singing, and indeed of music of 
any kind, a serious omission which I re- 
marked at Ratisbon, where during the pre- 
ceding week I had witnessed the adminis- 
tration of the rite. In the South German 
Cathedral the children were sent up to the 
high altar to be confirmed; but at the Ital- 
ian one the bishop, now vested in white 
cope and mitre, and attended by a priest 
bearing the chrism with which the forehead 
of each child was anointed after the laying 
on of hands, proceeded down the nave and 
confirmed the children as they stood. The 
addresses before and after the ceremony 
were very brief, so that the whole function 
lasted little more than an hour, whereas at 
Ratisbon it was a very tedious affair, extend- 
ing from eight o'clock till long past noon. 
There were no afternoon offices in the Ca- 
thedral, the nave, as is usual throughout 
Northern Italy, being given up to the Dot- 
trina Cristiana or Sunday school, one of 
those admirable practices so beneficial and 
so edifying that were instituted by St. 
Charles Borromeo in the sixteenth century. 
It was both novel and affecting to behold on 
this Sunday afternoon the vast area of the 
65 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

nave of Verona Cathedral filled with chil- 
dren, forming two divisions of boys and girls 
ranged opposite each other, and these again 
subdivided into classes, according to their 
age and capacities, drawn up between the 
pillars, while two or more instructors at- 
tended each class, and directed their ques- 
tions and explanations to every little indi- 
vidual without distinction. An ecclesiastic 
attended each class, accompanied by one or 
more laymen for the boys, and for the girls 
by as many matrons. Tables were placed in 
different recesses for writing. 

The pious originator of this weekly prac- 
tice extended it to every part of his immense 
diocese; and it is observed, I believe, not 
only in all the parochial churches of the 
Milanese, but of the neighbouring dioceses, 
whether suffragan to Milan or not. Thread- 
ing my way among the numerous groups of 
little people, I passed out into the spirit- 
soothing cloistral appendages on the south 
side of the Cathedral, where I made a lei- 
surely inspection of the little church of St. 
Giovanni in Fonte, and the mosaic pavement 
discovered twenty-two years ago by the Most 
Rev. M. Parlo Vignola, archdeacon and 
manager to the canons of Verona. A very 
66 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

beautiful fragment - of an ancient Roman 
bath with divers colours and designs, usually 
concealed by sawdust, which was removed 
for my inspection, it is 400 feet long and 152 
feet wide. The cloister was built on the 
mosaic without damaging it. It begins at 
the Cathedral library at the west end of the 
southern ambulatory and ends at the Bap- 
tistery or Church of St. Giovanni in Fonte, 
a very charming little basilica in a simple 
but graceful Romanesque style. 

The font of yellow Verona marble is an 
early example of how in the thirteenth cen- 
tury Lombard sculpture seems to have lost 
much of its old vigour without acquiring 
any qualities of superior grace or refinement. 
Each side of the font is covered with a large 
relief of a Biblical subject, very dull and 
coarse in execution. The font itself is inter- 
esting from its early form, one common in 
the chief baptisteries of Northern Italy. 
Like an island in the centre of the great 
octagonal tank is a lobed marble receptacle, 
in which the officiating priest stood while he 
immersed the catechumens. A moveable 
wooden bridge must have been used to en- 
able the priest to cross the water in the sur- 
rounding tank. 

67 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

There seems to be much disagreement be- 
tween antiquaries in regard to this most pic- 
turesque if not actually beautiful Cathedral 
at Verona, which owing to the unfinished 
state of its south-eastern campanile makes but 
little show in the panorama of the city. It 
was certainly completed by 806, and the epi- 
taph to an archdeacon, Pacificus (who 
founded seven churches in the city, and was 
himself a skilful artist in wood, stone and 
metal), tells that he ordered repairs thirty 
years after the death of Charlemagne, namely 
in 844.^ The apse, with its thin closely set 
pilasters of Corinthian form, together with 
the lateral walls of the choir, may be of the 
original structure, otherwise this grand and 
characteristic building cannot be referred in 
any part to date earlier than the twelfth cen- 
tury. 

^ This epitaph to Pacificus, whose name is written in three 
languages, Pacificus, Solomon, Irenaeus, deserves quoting: 
Archdiaconus quiescit hie vero Pacificus, 
Sapientia praeclarus forma praefulgida. 
Nullus talis est inventus in nostris temporibus 
Ecclesiarum fundator, renovator optimus, 
Zenonis, Proculi, Viti, Petri et Laurentii, 
Dei quoque Genitricis. 

Quadraginta et tres annos fuit Archdiaconus, 
Septimo vicesimo aetatis anno Caesaris Lotharii, 
Mole carnis est solutus anno Dominicse Incamationis 846. 

68 



VERONA 
West Front of the Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Externally the salient points in Verona 
Cathedral are: the series of apses along the 
north and south sides; the south porch; and 
the graceful two-light window at the west 
end of either aisle, belonging, it would seem, 
to some very extensive works undertaken in 
the fourteenth century, when the whole char- 
acter of the interior must have been changed 
by the introduction of those graceful pointed 
arches rising from complex columns of red 
marble, boldly sculptured as to their cap- 
itals with three rows of leafage. 

The interior of Verona Cathedral is like 
a vase filled with the memories of the past 
and the gems of genius — a focus in which 
are concentrated the thoughts and energies 
of ages; the successive schools of art from 
naive simplicity to developed excellence; 
the spirit of the Middle Ages and that of the 
Italian Renaissance, all fused together with a 
result in effect that defies criticism. 

The first view of an Italian Pointed 
church, whatever its date, is startlingly un- 
like anything that we are accustomed to. It 
is usually a long, broad, rather low structure, 
lighted with but few windows, with a small 
clerestory, if any, and with scarcely any ir- 
regularity in shape or plan. We rarely find 
69 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

more than one tower, and this is never com- 
bined with the rest of the design in the man- 
ner common to the north. There is no ap- 
proach to such combination of steeples as are 
seen at Canterbury, Lincoln and Wells; at 
Laon, Rheims and Rouen; at Bamberg, 
Gelnhausen and Laach.^ The steeple, when 
it does occur, is often detached; and when 
it is engaged, it is placed in some irregular 
and abnormal position, where we feel at 
once that it is purposely not intended to be 
looked at in conjunction with the main fa- 
cade of the building. 

This habitual separation of the tower 
from the church is the principal cause of 
the inferiority of Italian churches, whether 
in the round-arched or Pointed styles, to 
those of the North, such a separation depri- 
ving the ensemble of that feature through the 
help of which the west fronts of English and \ 
French cathedrals are so much ennobled and 
embellished. 

In Italy the only relief to the monotonous 
outline of the main building is at the cross- 
ing, where, particularly in the earlier bom- 
bard churches, an octagonal lantern is intro- 

^ The grand central tower is almost entirely unknown in 
Italy. 

70 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

duced, but this is as a rule of but slight ele- 
vation and not intended to produce any of 
the effects aimed at in such central steeples as 
those of Gloucester, Salisbury and Worces- 
ter, Coutances and Rouen. 

The Northern medieval architect devel- 
oped his style away from the reach of the 
remains of classic architecture, and with no 
precedents to divert his attention from the 
one style which he was engaged in almost 
unconsciously perfecting, practically with- 
out the knowledge of any other. The Ital- 
ian was otherwise situated. He worked in a 
country with a great past, the architectural 
monuments of which were everywhere 
around him. And these architectural mon- 
uments belonged to a school of constructive 
design totally opposed to that which was 
dominant in Europe during the Middle 
Ages. 

They were the monuments and representa- 
tives of the great lintel system, which had 
died out with the decline and fall of the 
Roman Empire. The new structural form 
was that of the arch in its entirety, which 
had only been half accepted by the Romans 
in a one-sided and architecturally apologetic 
manner, but was now to be carried to its 
71 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

utmost development by the Goth, whose in- 
fluence was to become prominent throughout 
Europe. 

But in the midst of this permeation of the 
arcuated style, there lingered in Italy a con- 
stant tendency to a revival of, or return to, 
the antique forms, the remains of which 
were so plentiful; and the result was not 
only the existence here and there of groups 
of artists influenced by some one building of 
antiquity which they admired and were de- 
sirous of reproducing in its best features in 
their new work, but a general obstacle every- 
where to this frank acceptance of the arcu- 
ated style as a system of balanced and but- 
tressed construction. 

The old classic principle of repose still 
asserted itself in the medieval art of Italy. 
The buttress was never made a feature in the 
design, except with old classic pilaster-like 
forms; the arch was largely used; its pointed 
form was more or less adopted, though with 
hesitation, but its external constructive ex- 
pression was shirked, and the obvious aim 
was to combine the Gothic arcuated con- 
struction with the classic immobility of de- 
sign and expression; or, if this were not the 
conscious aim, it was the unconscious result 
72 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of conflicting tastes and associations. It is 
to the lingering of certain reminiscences of 
classic art that is mainly due the want of 
unity of design, and the entirely unsatisfac- 
tory character of the Italian buildings 
erected between the middle of the thirteenth 
and the end of the fourteenth centuries as 
compared with the best of Northern Gothic. 

" You may go to a grand English cathe- 
dral," says one of the most distinguished ar- 
chitects of the Gothic Revival, " and find 
that from every point of view, inside and 
outside, every feature is well proportioned 
to its place, and beautiful in itself, while the 
tout ensemble is also perfect both in detail 
and in mass; and one always finds it neces- 
sary to make excuses for even the best Ital- 
ian works, such as one never finds necessary 
or allows oneself to think of making for 
English ones." 

There is something really absurd in com- 
paring even the best of the Italian churches 
with such cathedrals as those of Canterbury 
and Lincoln, so superior are the latter from 
almost every point of view. 

In examining the features of any national 
school of architecture, it is interesting to ob- 
serve how distinctly some of its peculiarities 
73 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and prejudices are marked from the very 
first, even in the ground plans of the build- 
ings it produced. This is notably the case in 
the ecclesiastical edifices not only of France, 
England and Germany, but of Spain. Each 
had its special arrangement of plan seldom 
departed from, and handed on from age to 
age as a precious heirloom. In Italy the 
same feature strikes us there in almost all 
the buildings of the Pointed style. 

Their plans are all derived from two an- 
cient types, both of which are of great an- 
tiquity. It was from the basilica, converted 
into a church, with its nave and aisles ter- 
minated at the end by an apsidal projection 
from a sort of transept, that almost all the 
Italian Gothic churches with transepts were 
copied. 

Looking at the ground plan of St. Paul 
extra Muros at Rome, and comparing it 
with the fully developed church of Sta. 
Croce at Florence, we see that the only abso- 
lute difference consists in the addition of 
small chapels in the eastern side of the tran- 
septs, so that in place of the one apse which | 
marks the former we have the central apse 
and five chapels on each side of it; whilst 
in the churches, founded on the same type, 
74 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of the Frari at Venice and St. Domenico 
at Siena there are three; and in Sta. Maria 
Novella at Florence, SS. Giovanni e Paolo 
at Venice, and Sta. Anastasia at Verona, 
two eastern apsidal chapels on each side of 
the apse, all opening directly into the tran- 
septs. 

The Church of St. Clemente at Rome, 
dating from the fifth century, with its three 
aisles terminating in parallel apses at the 
east end, is the other type followed in such 
churches as the Cathedral of Torcello near 
Venice and, in fact, all Italian Pointed 
churches without transepts. And even when, 
as in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 
the Italian architects endeavoured to secure 
an immensely wide unbroken area of nave, 
as, for example, in the St. Fermo at Verona 
and the Church of the Eremitani at Padua, 
they still looked back to their old precedents, 
and finished them at the east with those 
parallel apses. 

Thus, in this respect, Italian Gothic was 
simply a natural development from an ear- 
lier style and, adhering very closely to the 
older plan and arrangements, affords us 
scarcely an example of those prolonged 
choirs of which the English cathedrals and 
75 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

abbeys are perhaps the most magnificent 
examples. 

But it was not only in respect of the plan 
that Italian Gothic thus founded itself upon 
what had before existed. The traces of 
classic influence are so many and so clear, 
that it is not too much to say that Gothic 
art was never fully developed in Italy, so 
fettered was it by the ever-present influence 
of buildings in another style. 

Hence the more we study the peculiari- 
ties, the more we see how strange a mixture 
there is in it of the character of Classic and 
Gothic art. 

Begun by the Dominicans very shortly 
after the middle of the thirteenth century, 
Sta. Anastasia at Verona is a church of a 
type specially adopted by that Order in 
Italy, as, for instance, in St. Lorenzo at 
Vicenza and SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice, 
wherein grandeur of proportion, ample 
space for large congregations and the tall 
cylindrical column — little used in England 
after the Transitional period, but on the 
continent through all the epochs of the 
Pointed — are the main characteristics. 

Graceful, yet at the same time majestic, 

Sta. Anastasia is cruciform in plan. The 

76 



I 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

campanile stands between the choir and the 
transept, whose roof is carried without any 
break in the shape of a lantern from north 
to south. The effect is peculiar, but the 
arrangement is only observable from the 
east, owing to the much greater lowness of 
the choir and apse. Sta. Anastasia, groined 
in brick throughout, and quadripartitely, 
has a nave of six bays with tall cylindrical 
columns of red and white marble, delicately 
foliaged as to their capitals, and resting 
upon very good bases. 

The clerestory windows, as at Sta. Maria 
Novella at Florence and Sta. Maria sopra 
Minerva at Rome, are circular, but enriched 
with sexfoil cusping. The arches are sim- 
ple, and evidently prepared for the painted 
decorations, which are exquisite; and the 
general effect of the interior, enriched as it 
has been from time to time with costly furni- 
ture, is truly solemn and imposing. A great 
drawback to the ensemble of this lovely 
church is the presence of iron ties spanning 
the bays at the springing of the arch. In 
medieval times vaulted roofs were the 
favourite mode of covering spaces, and the 
spans of the arches had to be regulated by 
the nature of the materials available. 
77 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Arches could only be practically built 
within certain limits of size, and the thrust 
of such arches had to be carefully provided 
for by the erection of buttresses, turrets and 
similar features. In this respect the North- 
ern architects evinced pre-eminent skill. The 
beautiful curves of their groinings are not 
interfered with by ties or other visible sup- 
port, and the necessary buttresses which exist 
outside contribute in no small degree to the 
external beauty of the buildings. Even 
where these buttresses are exaggerated, they 
are not without an effective character, as 
may be seen at Chartres, Le Mans and Notre 
Dame, Paris, where the buttresses around 
the choir have a somewhat undue influence 
upon the other architectural features of the 
building. 

In the south the Gothic architects of Italy 
showed less constructive ingenuity. Ignor- 
ing buttresses, they sought other means of 
combating the thrust of their arches. They 
found it in a system of iron ties, which con- 
nected the columns with each other and with 
the walls, and prevented the arches from 
spreading. This expedient, faulty though it 
be, has attracted admirers and even some 
imitators, but it can hardly be approved by 
78 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the thoughtful critic. It brings too evidently 
under notice the defect which attaches more 
or less to all arched buildings — their qual- 
ity of unrest, giving an idea of imperfection, 
destructive of confidence in the solidity and 
stability of the structure. 

The windows, as everything in this fine 
church, are vigorous and bold, and executed 
altogether on proper principles; though, un- 
fortunately, they are disfigured by coloured 
glass of the most terrible patterns and tints. 
They have enclosing arches built in alternate 
layers of brick and stone, and their traceries 
are entirely of stone, consisting of simple 
geometrical piercings of the simplest and 
purest outline. Here the tracery is treated 
simply as a piercing in a slab of stone and 
not as a piece of constructed masonry, such 
as is commonly seen in medieval English 
buildings. 

Given an arch of sufficient strength to 
carry the whole superincumbent weight of 
wall, it may fairly be argued that the filling 
in under it would be, where possible, a sin- 
gle thin block of stone, pierced with such 
openings only as were necessary to admit 
light; and the result would be generally 
that we should have nothing but plate tra- 
79 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

eery (which it would be waste of time to 
prove to be better than any other form) in 
place of the too ingenious line tracery, to 
which the Northern system of construction 
was likely to, and did always, lead. But it 
is obvious that the Italian system could never 
be carried out properly in any but small 
windows, and those who have studied North 
Italian Pointed know that it ended in a less 
satisfactory manner than did the English 
system of geometrically constructed bar tra- 
cery. 

We see comparatively little ancient stained 
glass in Italy — in Verona none at all — 
though now and then, as in the Cathedral 
at Florence, at Arezzo and St. Petronio, 
Bologna, it does occur, and in all these ex- 
amples of the most gorgeous colour. 

Unless an Italian Pointed church owes 
something to the hand of the painter, I ven- 
ture to say that it must be called tame, bald 
and unsatisfactory, as witness those two huge 
buildings of different epochs, St. Antonio at 
Padua and St. Petronio at Bologna; but we 
should have affronted Niccola Pisano and 
Antonio Vincenzi by telling them so to their 
faces. 

The truth is the Italian architect of the 
80 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, like a 
certain great English architect of the nine- 
teenth, regarded architecture as a vehicle 
for the representation of the sacred story in 
sculpture or fresco. 

The great religious Orders too were wise 
patrons of art, as St. Francesco at Assisi, Sta. 
Maria Novella, and Sta. Croce at Florence 
amply testify; and not a little of the noblest 
art of the medieval period is attributable to 
the foundation so nearly together of the two 
great religious Orders, the Franciscans in 
I2IO and the Dominicans in 1215, who, 
rivals in most things, were rivals also in their 
patronage of art and artists, and creating 
rivalry among the latter, pointed the way 
continually to fresh victories. The result is 
that some of the North Italian church inte- 
riors possess more interest for the true artist 
who rejoices in the combination of all the 
arts than any in the world; and St. Fran- 
cesco at Assisi, a fine groined church of gen- 
uine Northern Pointed design and effect, 
shows the result of such a combination by 
producing the most perfect church interior 
in Italy; whilst the interior of Sta. Ana- 
stasia at Verona, an example pitched alto- 
gether in a much lower key, is a good exam- 
81 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

pie of the effect which is obtainable by the 
use of simply decorative painting. Not only 
is this scheme of coloured decoration at Sta. 
Anastasia remarkable for its beauty and 
completeness, but as being coeval w^ith the 
building. 

The vaults are very gracefully painted 
with floriated bands along the ribs, and cen- 
tral patterns in each cell, the colours being 
rich and soft on a white plastered ground. 
The eastern portion of the vault, including 
the choir and one bay of the nave, has the 
older and simpler decorations. The rest of 
the nave has more elaborate painted orna- 
ment — foliage mixed with figures of Do- 
minican saints, executed in the fifteenth cen- 
tury. On the walls below are many fine 
frescoes, ranging from 1300 to the fifteenth 
century, with noble effigies and reliefs of 
saints and sacred subjects. 

High up, over the central opening into 
one of the chapels opening from the south 
transept, is one of the most beautiful frescoes 
of Pisanello or Vittore Pisano, a very charm- 
ing painter and the greatest medallist of 
Italy. The scene represents St. George and 
the Princess after the Conquest of the 



82 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Dragon, with accessory figures, the sea, a 
mountainous landscape and an elaborately 
painted city in the background. In the Ca- 
pella di Gesu, a little chapel ofif the south 
aisle, admirers of Early Renaissance orna- 
ment will view with pleasure a panelled 
pilaster, which, set at an angle of about 45 
degrees, and carried round the arch above 
the capital, forms in this and many other 
cases in the same school of work the sub- 
stitute for the recessed ordering of a Gothic 
archway. 

The west front of Sta. Anastasia is one of 
that class in which it has been intended to 
cover the whole with marble. In these cases 
the walls are first of all built very roughly 
in brick, with courses projecting at intervals 
for the sake of affording bond to the marble. 
In the majority of cases the marble fronts 
have never been built above the base mould- 
ings, so that such rough, unfinished fronts 
as those of Sta. Anastasia, St. Petronio at 
Bologna and Sta. Croce at Florence are 
quite characteristic of the country. 

From the general truthfulness of St. Ana- 
stasia, and the exquisite beauty of the ar- 
rangement of the red, white and gray marble 



83 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

in its western doorway — than which there 
is hardly anything of its kind more beautiful 
or more thoroughly Gothic in the whole 
realm of Italian Pointed art — it may fairly 
be thought that we have lost as much by its 
non-completion as by that of any other un- 
finished building in the country. 

Adjacent to the west front is the beautiful 
little chapel of St. Peter of Verona with 
plate tracery in the circular windows similar 
in character to the window in the south tran- 
sept of Sta. Anastasia. It is, however, only 
one of a type frequently met with in Italy, 
and hardly merits the praise which Ruskin 
has so lavishly bestowed upon it. 

Verona is particularly rich in early exam- 
ples of decorative sculpture, exemplified in 
the very interesting series of reliefs which 
cover the western fagade of St. Zeno * — a 
perfect masterpiece of the decorative art of 
the period, the middle of the twelfth century. 
These reliefs represent both sacred subjects 
and scenes of war and hunting, mingled with 
grotesque monsters such as specially de- 
lighted the rude, vigorous nature of the 
Lombards. They are all richly decorative 

^ St. Zeno was Bishop of Verona in the time of the Em- 
perors Julian and Valentinian I (a. D. 362-380). 

84 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

in effect, though strange and unskilful in 
detail.^ 

As a Lombardic Romanesque fagade of its 
period, this of St. Zeno may be accepted as 
typical. The architectural disposition of the 
interior is well marked on the exterior by 
slender and most gracefully shaped pilasters 
or rather half-columns which rise in the cen- 
tre in four subdivisions, whilst on the sides 
they are uninterrupted. The vertical lines 
are agreeably broken by a frieze of arcades 
which emphasizes the conflicting dynamic 
and static elements of the construction. Not 
less worthy of study is the finish and orig- 
inality of the porch. Projecting half-col- 
umns form a tabernacle over the entrance. 
A semicircle which rises above the door is 
richly decorated, as also is the field formed 
by the architrave. Part of the western 
bronze doors are especially interesting as 
being among the earliest important examples 
in Italy of cast bronze reliefs. They repre- 
sent scenes from the life of the patron saint, 
are rudely modelled, and yet very dramatic 
and sculpturesque in style. Part of these 

' Many of these twelfth-century reliefs are signed by the 
sculptor, but these merely constitute lists of names about 
whom nothing is known. 

85 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

doors are covered with bronze reliefs of 
scenes from the Bible, which are of still ear- 
lier date and were probably brought to Ve- 
rona from the Rhenish provinces. They are 
frequently stated to be of beaten bronze, but 
they are really castings, apparently by the 
cire perdu process. 

A rose window of great beauty, formed of 
concentrically arranged arcades supported 
by columns, heightens the beauty of the fa- 
cade. One of the earliest examples of what 
is styled a Wheel of Fortune window, it was 
executed by a sculptor named Briolotus, who 
also built the Baptistery. An inscription in 
this latter records the fact, and speaks of the 
window as a work which excited wonder in 
those times. 

The Campanile stands detached but close 
to this fine Lombard church, the west front 
of which is a reddish marble and the sides 
of mixed marble and brick in alternate 
bands. Four or five courses of fine red brick 
lie between bands of hard cream-coloured 
limestone or marble forming broad stripes 
of red and white all over the wall. 

The campanile, surmounted by a cone- 
shaped spire and pinnacles, is wholly of 
brick and harmonizes beautifully with the 
86 



VERONA 

St. Zeno 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

church, which stands clear of the other 
buildings on the outskirts of the city of the 
Montagues and Capulets; and, as the trav- 
eller approaches from Trent, this great mass 
of St. Zeno standing out against a clear blue 
Italian sky on such an afternoon as that on 
which I first saw it^ forms a never-to-be- 
forgotten picture. 

The interior of St. Zeno is beyond ques- 
tion the grandest specimen of the Lombardo- 
Romanesque basilica in existence. Large 
and lofty, it has all the solemnity without 
the gloominess of St. Ambrose's at Milan or 
St. Michele at Pavia, being as may be sup- 
posed from its date (1138-78) in a much 
lighter and more elegant phase of the style. 

From the west door to the level of the 
nave there is a descent of ten steps, contained 
in a kind of additional bay westward of the 
first of a series of great piers dividing the 
arches opening into the aisles into groups of 
twos and threes. These arches rest on grace- 
fully proportioned cylindrical columns, 
whose capitals present much variety of foli- 
aged and other ornamentation, the Corin- 
thian prevailing in the eastern part of the 
nave. Two of the great attached piers above 
mentioned carry a segmental arch which 
87 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

spans the church transversely and abuts the 
vast mass of walling above the arcades. The 
piers of these spanning arches appear to have 
formed part of a system of vaulting which 
was never carried out, the architect content- 
ing himself with a flat ceiling of wood sup- 
ported at intervals by arches. When the 
present graceful Gothic choir took the place 
of the Romanesque one in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, it was found necessary to remove this 
flat roof and to replace it with another of 
larch wood, similar in construction to those 
in St. Fermo and in the great Eremitani 
Church at Padua, but less complex in sec- 
tion. At St. Zeno the roof takes a trefoil 
shape, with collars joining the two cusps and 
coloured with gold flowers in white panels. 
Thus, the two great transverse stone arches 
now support nothing, being quite independ- 
ent of the roof above them, and as may be 
imagined a very singular effect is produced. 
This, however, is not the only instance in 
Italy of such an arrangement. It occurs 
inter alia at Florence in St. Miniato, where, 
however, the space between the arches and 
the simple wooden roof of low-pitched gable 
form is filled up with masonry. At St. Zeno 
the remaining great attached piers support | 



i 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

nothing, so that the portion of nave eastward 
of the second great transverse arch bears a 
considerable resemblance to that of Ely Ca- 
thedral, where, it will be recollected, the 
original flat Norman ceiling was raised to 
its present cradle form after the great altera- 
tions carried out under Alan de Walsingham 
after the old Tower fell early in the four- 
teenth century. 

The clerestory walls at St. Zeno are of 
great height, pierced rarely at their highest 
part with very small round-headed windows. 
We miss, however, the spacious triforia of 
Milan and Pavia, there being nothing to oc- 
cupy the great surface of wall under the 
clerestory windows. 

The aisles have open lean-to roofs, painted, 
and at the west end of the southern one 
stands the font, a huge octagonal mass of 
polished marble, having its sides enriched 
with arcading. There are no sculptured 
groups, but the very beautiful shaft intro- 
duced at each angle imparts lightness and 
grace to a composition which might other- 
wise appear heavy. High up in the walls of 
the aisles are a few small round-headed win- 
dows, deeply splayed, and glazed in contig- 
uous circles. 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The area of the choir is beautifully spa- 
cious and, raised as it is, makes one of the 
noblest crypts in existence. The services 
performed in it can be well seen and heard. 
Thirteen steps lead up to the choir from the 
aisles, while twenty conduct down into the 
crypt, which is visible from the nave through 
three arcades on elegant coupled shafts. 

In the choir which terminates in a five- 
sided apse lighted by lancets, unfortunately 
glazed in ugly sheets, the stalls of excellent 
Complete Gothic character ranged continu- 
ously round it should be carefully studied, 
likewise an exquisite window in the north 
wall with a round arch comprising three 
lancets on slender shafts, and the tympanum 
pierced plate-tracery wise with two inverted 
quatrefoils. 

The vaulting is truly beautiful, and the 
carefully restored frescoes, which enrich not 
only this part of the church but the walls of 
the choir aisles on either hand, will enchain 
the attention of the student for hours. 

Apparently these frescoes at St. Zeno were 
painted haphazard by one pious man after 
another without much thought beyond that 
of making the particular work in which he 
was interested tell its own story well and 
90 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

produce its own effect. So little did he 
think of other men's previous work that the 
same subjects are not infrequently repeated, 
with the result that the walls are here sober 
and there gorgeous, but everjrwhere coloured 
and everywhere more or less interesting. 

A genuine and still intact specimen of 
ninth-century work is the crypt of St. Zeno, 
founded to contain the tomb of that saintly 
Bishop of Verona by Pepin, King of Italy, 
with low semicircular vault, supported by 
forty columns, irregular in their shafts and 
showing a vast fertility of ideas in the sculp- 
ture of their capitals. This sole remnant of 
the original church embodies an idea yet new 
in Italian architecture; and a mysterious 
gloom, a brooding presence of antiquity, im- 
parts an effect of awe and solemnity to those 
dim aisles and that forest of pillars under 
its low arched roof. As to the architects of 
this period little is known, except that the 
Comasque builders still retained the pre- 
eminence and privileges they had enjoyed 
under the Longobard kings, confirmed to 
them by Charlemagne, with exemption from 
all local statutes and burdens, the like favour 
being extended to them by the Popes. They 
were allowed to fix their own wages, while 
91 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

practitioners not of their society were for- 
bidden to enter into rivalship against them. 

Important as is the brickwork of North- 
ern Germany, it cannot be compared in gen- 
eral artistic interest with that of the North 
of Italy. Much as there is to find fault with 
in the construction and general system of 
design of the Italian buildings of the Middle 
Ages, it would be idle to deny to them those 
highest merits which mark the work of civ- 
ilized, delicate and refined artists. German 
architecture, after the end of the thirteenth 
century, was uninteresting and unrefined be- 
yond that of any other country, and the as- 
cending scale would take us from it through 
England and Spain and the North of France, 
on to the greatest perfection which was 
reached in some of their works by the best 
Italian artists. In saying this I by no means 
give the palm to the Italian artist; far from 
it. But his work has certain tender graces, 
especially in its detail, which has never been 
surpassed. 

There is some charming brickwork in the 
fourteenth-century Gothic church of St. 
Fermo Maggiore,^ close to the Ponto Navi, 

^ It is traditional that the crypt of St. Fermo pertains to the 
date when the church was certainly founded, i.e. in 755, under 

92 



VERONA 

5t. Ferno Ma^^iore 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

but it displays one of those features of sham 
construction to which I have drawn atten- 
tion both in Italy and in Germany, i. e., the 
screen wall carried up high above the roofs, 
but of no possible use. It occurs in St. 
Fermo, in the east end, where we have a 
central and two smaller side apses opening 
out of one of those vast aisleless churches of 
which the city presents several other exam- 
ples. Here we have each of the five sides of 
the central apse surmounted by sham gables, 
the grouping of which, with the pinnacles 
between them, and the tall, graceful campa- 
nile adjacent, undoubtedly forms a most pic- 
turesque tout ensemble. Perhaps the finest 
example of the treatment of the east end of 
an Italian Gothic church is to be found in 
that of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari at 
Venice, where we have a central apse lighted 
by two tiers of windows, and a series of 

the reign of the Longobard Desiderius; and the massive piers, 
with plain heavy vaulting in that subterranean church, have all 
the appearance of untouched antiquity. The date 1065 has 
been, however, conjectured for this Veronese example, and 
more plausibly than that earlier one. The crypt of St. Mark's, 
Venice, is the earliest example — at least, in its developed form 
and importance — presented by Italian church architecture, 
preceding those that follow next in order of date, at St. Miniato, 
Florence, of 1013, and at the abbey of Monte Cassino, 1066. 

93 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

chapels on the eastern side of either transept, 
each with two windows on the same level as 
the lower tier of the central apse. The di- 
vision between the two stages of the latter 
is strongly marked by a bold cornice. 

The west front of St. Fermo is as good an 
example of a completed coloured fagade as 
any in North Italy. Its date may be fixed 
between 1270 and 13 13, but its effect is, as 
is often the case in Italian work, that of a 
considerably earlier period. 

Here we find a round-arched doorway 
without any capitals to its shafts, with two 
stages of arcading on either side, and four 
lancets, trefoiled, above. A small four-light 
window occupies the gable, which is finished 
with the usual cornice. 

The whole front is built in alternated 
courses of red brick and stone; pilasters 
finished with pinnacles stop the strings and 
cornice at the angles, and a third pinnacle 
rises from the apex of the gable. 

The imposingly situated north porch of 
St. Fermo is one of that favourite and beau- 
tiful type in which each face is arched, and 
the whole covered with a flat-pitched roof. 
The arches spring from the carved capitals 



94 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of single shafts which are held together 
with iron ties to resist the thrust of the 
arches. The doorway leading into the 
church is perhaps one of the most beautiful 
in Verona, with the rich, rope-like mould- 
ings of its arch in stones of varied hue, sup- 
ported on either side by three receding shafts 
with foliaged capitals. Above the shaft 
dividing the entrance is an effigy of St. 
Fermo, represented carrying a book and a 
palm branch, while in the tympanum of the 
doorway and on the eastern wall of the 
porch there are some fresco paintings in 
various states which will repay examination 
by the student of the art, as will those in 
the interior of the church above this door- 
way and at the back of the beautiful stone 
and marble pulpit representing the four 
Latin Doctors, the Evangelists, the Ascent 
of Elisha, twelve prophets with scrolls, and 
the Crucifixion. A fresco of the Annuncia- 
tion is the only other existing one of Pisa- 
nello besides that in Sta. Anastasia. 

Originally St. Fermo had an aisleless nave 
and transepts, being in fact one of those 
great churches that was built for the use 
and convenience of an order of preachers, 



95 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and not for receiving a number of altars. 
These were added and chapels built for 
their reception in Renaissance times. 

There is no distinct choir, a semicircular 
screen of marble ^ very similar to that in the 
Cathedral containing the chorus. The 
organ stands in the central apse behind the 
high altar, but w^as completely hidden from 
view at the time of my visit by those crim- 
son and other coloured draperies with which 
too many an Italian church is bedizened at 
festival times. 

The whole vast area of the nave, some 
fifty feet across, is covered by a huge com- 
plicated wooden roof of multifoil shape, one 
of the finest examples of a class found, as a 
rule, only in Venetia, or in churches built 
by Venetian architects in Istria and the sub- 
ject provinces. Such a roof, which hardly 
admits of intelligible description, may be 
considered the type of a late basilican one, 
basilican naves having been, we know, first 
spanned by enormous wooden constructions 
of great plainness. At St. Fermo the fra- 
ming is concealed by a coving or barrel-vault- 
ing in wood, the surface of which is divided 

* It has this inscription : " Expensis Corrocatiis et piorum 
eleemosynis MDLXXIII." 

96 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

into small square panels all painted and gilt, 
imparting a rich effect. These fourteenth- 
and fifteenth-century painted decorations are 
well preserved, delicate patterns covering all 
the framework of the panelling and of all 
the panels themselves. At two stages, where 
there is a check in the line of the cornice, 
rows of half figures of saints are minutely- 
painted on blue or gold grounds, forming a 
scheme of decoration indescribably beauti- 
ful. 

I attended an evening service in this 
church on Whit-Sunday. 

When it began, the vast pillarless expanse 
was in gloom, but during a very lengthy and 
impassioned sermon from a Franciscan, 
every lamp and candle in the church was 
lighted up, bringing out the shape and col- 
ouring of this roof most vividly, the whole 
effect being very striking. The music, how- 
ever, was trivial, the organ-playing very in- 
different, and the incessant fluttering of the 
ladies' fans not a little irritating to a North- 
ern temperament. 

Totally unable to comprehend the worthy 
friar's discourse, I allowed my thoughts to 
vagabondize about the architecture, watch- 
ing the lighting of the aforesaid lamps and 
97 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

candles — conduct which, had my lot been 
cast in the days of St. John Chrysostom, 
would assuredly have drawn down upon me 
the reproof of "the Golden-Mouthed."^ 

It would be tedious to describe the re- 
maining churches of Verona in detail; a 
few outline notes of a few of the more in- 
teresting and important must therefore suf- 
fice. 

St. Stefano, distinguished by its rather tall 
octagonal lantern of red brick, is situated 
on Theodoric's side of the Adige. The main 
body of this church has been ruthlessly mod- 

^ On one occasion, while Chrysostom continued preaching, 
probably seated in his high chair, cathedra, or throne in the 
choir of the church, the sunlight grew dim, and an attendant 
began to kindle the lamps. On this the attention of the con- 
gregation was distracted. The preacher perceived this, and 
recalled their wandering thoughts in the following pungent 
words : " Let me beg you to arouse yourselves, and to put 
away that sluggishness of mind. But why do I say this ? At 
the very time when I am setting forth before you the Scriptures, 
you are turning your eyes away from me and fixing them upon 
the lamps and upon the man who is lighting the lamps. Oh, 
of what a sluggish soul is this the mark, to leave the preacher, 
and turn to him ! I, too, am kindling the fire of the Scriptures; 
and upon my tongue there is burning a taper, the taper of 
sound doctrine. Greater is this light, and better, than the light 
that is yonder. For, unlike that man, it is no wick steeped 
in oil that I am lighting up. I am rather inflaming souls, 
moistened with piety, by the desire of heavenly discourse." 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ernized, but it keeps the feature already 
mentioned, its solemn pillared crypt, the ar- 
cades surrounding its upper and lower apses, 
and the stone chair of the bishop still in its 
ancient place, a memorial of the times when 
St. Stefano's disputed with the vaster Sta. 
Maria Matricolare on the other side of the 
river its right to be principal among the 
churches of Verona, as the seat of her 
bishops in life and their resting-place in 
death. 

A few steps westwards and we arrive at 
the imposing Renaissance church of St. 
Giorgio, one of the most respectable of its 
class in Verona, and due to the native archi- 
tect Sanmichele. 

In common with almost every other 
Italian church of its period St. Giorgio 
shows how the designer made the interest 
of his interior culminate in the central dome, 
without destroying the effect by something 
less imposing in the shape of a deep choir 
beyond. 

St. Lorenzo is a small Romanesque church 
purged by careful restoration of modern- 
isms. It is extremely narrow, and has a 
chancel, transepts, nave and two aisles. The 
choir and aisles terminate in apses, and there 
99 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

is an apse on the eastern side of either tran- 
sept, so that the plan may be termed parallel 
cinq-apsidal. There are triforia as in the 
Rhenish Romanesque churches, large enough 
for use as galleries. These are vaulted, 
whereas the nave has only a barrel-roof with 
tie-beams besides some arches across. 

The arches of the triforia correspond to 
the nave arcades below them, and are joined 
at the west end by a gallery. The red 
marble piers have capitals like classical ones, 
but some have no bases. There is a large, 
groined south porch with two marble col- 
umns on lofty bases and with tall capitals 
of the Corinthian acanthus kind. A large 
circular tower rises at the west end of either 
aisle, built of brick and stone in alternate 
layers and capped with a low spire of tiles. 
In addition there is a south-eastern tower 
all of brick and a cone-like spire. 

The interior of St. Bernardino is another 
of those huge pillarless expanses like St. Eu- 
phemia, St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. 
Fermo — Gothic, but horribly modernized. 
The two great cloisters here, one forming a 
kind of atrium to the west front and the 
other lying along the north side of the 
church, attest its former monastic opulence. 
100 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The little oratory of St. Zeno has a pretty 
interior, the round arch dividing the chancel 
from the nave rising only to the height of 
those which separate the latter from its 
aisles. 

Another very unpretending little church is 
Sta. Maria Antica, consisting only of a nave 
and apse. The former has six narrow bays 
on cylindrical shafts, with either plain or 
much-defaced carved capitals. There is 
neither triforium nor clerestory, and the 
groining is quadripartite, the transverse 
arch between each vaulting bay springing 
from a corbel in lieu of a continuous shaft. 
At the western part of the nave the stone 
vault has disappeared, a rough wooden ceil- 
ing taking its place. 

The aisles have very small windows in- 
serted high up in the walls, but here are 
none whatever in the apse. A pretty effect 
is produced by the responds or half-piers 
carrying the easternmost bay on either side 
of the nave, being constructed in alternate 
layers of red and white stone. 

The magnificently-sculptured tombs of 

the Delia Scala lords, outside this little 

church of Sta. Maria Antica, exemplify 

Florentine influence in Verona. Designed 

101 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

with steadily growing splendour, from the 
simple sarcophagus of Martino I. down to 
the elaborate canopy over the tomb of the 
fratricide Can Signorio, designed with statu- 
ettes of the Virtues, to the possession of 
which he could lay so little claim, the re- 
cumbent effigies and decorative details of 
these tombs are very beautiful, but the 
smaller figures of angels, saints and virtues 
are rather clumsy in proportion. The latest 
tomb, that of Can Signorio, erected during 
his lifetime (c. 1370) is signed " Boninus 
de Campiglione Mediolanensis Dioscesis." 
This sculptor, though of Milanese origin, 
belongs really to the school of the Floren- 
tine, Andrea Pisano. One characteristic of 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in 
Verona was the custom, also followed in 
other Lombardic cities, of setting large 
equestrian statues on the tombs of powerful 
military leaders, in some cases over the re- 
cumbent effigy of the dead man, as if to 
represent him in full vigour of life as well 
as in death. That which crowns the canopy 
over the tomb of Can Grande is a very noble 
though somewhat quaint work. 

Apart from its churches, I visited few 
Italian cities with more pleasure, and quitted 
102 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

few with more regret than Verona; whether 
as the first Italian city on my road it hap- 
pened, by its appearance and monuments, 
very novel to a transalpine traveller, par- 
ticularly to engage my attention, or whether 
it really possesses many means of exciting 
interest, I know not; but, as I bade it fare- 
well in the full blaze of noon on Tuesday 
in Whitsun week, I could not forbear ad- 
dressing it in the words of Cotta, one of its 
poets : 

Verona, qui te viderit, 

Et non amarit protinus, 

Amore perditissimo, 

Is, credo, se ipsum non amat, 

Caretque amandi sensibus, 

Et odit omnes gratias. 



103 



CHAPTER III 

VICENZA 

As Genoa owes her splendour to her ar- 
chitect, Galeasso Alessi, the friend of Michael 
Angelo and Sangallo, so Vicenza owes hers 
to Palladio, whose reputation as a great 
Renaissance designer will probably survive 
after a fashion, but more on the wings of 
fame and because what has once been said 
about him than on the merits of what he 
called buildings, but which were rather full- 
size models of buildings. More thought and 
more intellect may have gone to producing 
some of these than went to any of the now 
more admired structures of Venice and 
Verona; they form a striking warning of 
the consequences of neglecting the first de- 
sideratum of architecture, truth and durabil- 
ity of construction. There is a something 
singular in the geographical juxtaposition 
of Verona, Vicenza and Venice, lying at 
the three corners of a not very large triangle 
104 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of country, representatives respectively of 
real architectural building, of " school " de- 
signing, and of picturesque architecture of 
no rule or regulation at all. 

The fact that the latter has the most lively 
hold upon the interests of most people at 
present must not be made too decidedly an 
argument in favour of the more lasting in- 
fluence of the " romantic " school ; allow- 
ance has to be made for the historical asso- 
ciations of Venice as well as for the fact that 
the romance side of artistic interest was so 
long predominant in every branch of art and 
literature. " School " art, on the other hand, 
always has in it the seeds of decay; yet the 
day has come round when the unquestion- 
able talent, not to say genius, applied to it 
by Palladio, has made Vicenza again a 
centre of interest to the architectural trav- 
eller. But the celebrated Renaissance archi- 
tect destroyed his chance by forgetting the 
constructive basis of architecture, content- 
ing himself with getting up scenic buildings 
as fast as he could without considering their 
future. He did so much, however, in the 
art of abstract design that it would not be 
quite fair or allowable, even for the most 
ardent zealot for Gothic, to pass his memory 
105 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

over with a sneer; though every candid 
critic must admit how inferior in interest 
and association are his artificial composi- 
tions to the sometimes less artistic but genu- 
ine and durable erections which the Italian 
medieval architects, supplying the wants of 
their day with the materials nearest to hand, 
have left as illustration of brick and marble 
in the Middle Ages. 

It is, however, with the ecclesiastical and 
not with the civil and domestic architec- 
ture of Vicenza, that this work is imme- 
diately concerned. So I will at once pass on 
to the Cathedral, one of those buildings in 
which we can discern how tame and unin- 
teresting beyond that of any other nation 
Italian Pointed architecture could become 
after the middle of the thirteenth century. 

Begun in 1260, the Cathedral of Vicenza 
is an immensely broad edifice, mainly built 
of brick, and comprising a nave, 60 feet 
wide, without aisles, but with a series of 
chapels opening out of it, and a choir of cor- 
responding width finely raised upon a crypt 
and terminating apsidally. 

As I have already pointed out, the clere- 
story in an Italian Gothic church is, as a 



106 



I 



VICENZA 

Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

rule, a very insignificant feature; in fact, 
the windows which may be regarded as the 
eyes of a building, the feature by which it 
is immediately recognized like the belfry 
windows of an English tower, contribute 
but little to the general appearance of the 
structure. 

At Vicenza, however, the clerestory of the 
Cathedral is unusually lofty, with pointed 
windows of two lights without any cuspings 
or tracery. Three of these clerestory win- 
dows light each of the four great compart- 
ments into which the nave is divided, and 
to accommodate themselves to the pointed 
arch of the vaulting which spans them in- 
ternally, the central one is placed somewhat 
higher up in the wall than that on either side 
of it. 

The brickwork forming the parapet above 
the windows is worthy of notice. It con- 
sists of one row of billeted or dog-tooth or- 
nament, a second in which the design takes 
the form of a rope-like moulding, and a 
third composed of a number of little dia- 
monds between uprights. 

The windows which light the chapels 
fringing the nave are of two acutely pointed 



107 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

lights resting upon a corbel in lieu of the 
prolonged shaft. The effect is singular, but 
hardly pleasant. 

The west front, of a type common to 
churches in this part of Italy, has fine tall, 
wide arcades beneath a gable the whole width 
of the church. I speak of the gable, but 
in this instance it has a flat apex and curved 
sides. The five pointed arches in this west 
front of Vicenza Cathedral start from 
square piers with pillarets niched in their 
angles, such as we see in the Romanesque 
of Brunswick and Saxony, and beautifully 
foliaged capitals. Within the central arch 
is a square-headed doorway beneath a 
pointed arch, which has two orders of 
moulding, the outer one being composed of 
twisted shafts while the inner one assumes 
a scroll-like character. The tympanum is 
unrelieved by carving or fresco. The wall 
within the arches on either hand is built of 
red stone in squares, that immediately adja- 
cent to the doorway being pierced with a 
long two-light window whose central shaft 
is banded at mid-distance. The lights are 
sharply pointed, and a small quatrefoiled 
circle forms the tracery. Above the arcades 
is a wall space in whose four compartments 
108 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the stone-work is relieved by little red dia- 
mond-shaped panels, which produce a very 
pleasing efifect of natural colour; and in the 
centre is a finely dimensioned round win- 
dow, with spokes of a very weedy order 
radiating from its centre. 

From the south-west corner of the some- 
what dreary square in which the Cathedral 
is situated, an interesting assemblage of ob- 
jects presents itself, embracing the vast but 
not picturesque Duomo itself; a low cam- 
panile imbedded in some houses opposite 
with shrubs growing out of the brickwork; 
and the graceful tower in the Piazza Ragi- 
one, in which the red brick of its three up- 
per octagonal stages contrasts strikingly with 
the green of its copper dome. I may remark 
in passing that this campanile which rises 
from the midst of some of the masterpieces 
of Palladio, is even more slender than others, 
being 20 feet at the base and 300 feet high; 
and it must be remembered that what gives 
these bell towers their singular aspect is that 
the tower is carried up the whole height of 
the same size as the base, or at least with so 
small a diminution as to make it difficult to 
decide whether it actually contracts, or only 
appears to do so from the effect of perspec- 
109 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tive. In medieval days the bell tower or 
campanile was the symbol of power. The 
liberty to erect such a tower was everywhere 
highly prized as a sign of independence, and 
we know that this was the case in the North 
as well as in the South, in the " Free 
Towns" founded in France by Edward I. 
of England, as well as in the prosperous 
commercial cities of the Low Countries, and 
the more stately capitals of the Italian States. 

Apart from their special significance, the 
Italian Gothic campanili must be considered 
interesting rather than admirable in an ar- 
chitectural sense. In the plains of Italy they 
had a special justification, serving both as 
watch-towers and guides, as well as indica- 
ting the power and authority of the cities in 
which they were placed. 

The apse of the Cathedral has been pro- 
longed into a tall lantern and dome, a ques- 
tionable addition. Here the material is 
light and dark red stone in alternate lay- 
ers. Pilasters with capitals reminiscent of 
those in the side and main apses of Ve- 
rona Cathedral run up the wall, marking 
it off into thirteen compartments which are 
lighted by as many tall narrow round- 
headed windows of one opening, whose 
110 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

height would appear exaggerated but for the 
piece of stone carving introduced transom- 
wise at mid-height. The low obtuse-headed 
windows of the modernized crypt are seen 
below the pilasters, so that altogether this 
apse of Vicenza Cathedral is unusually ele- 
vated. 

Inside, the church, whose arrangement of 
arcades and vaulting recalls that of Miinster 
and Osnabriick Cathedrals, can hardly be 
pronounced so poetical from its extravagant 
breadth, thus neutralizing its height, which 
is by no means inconsiderable. It is also 
very deficient in colour. There are four 
great pointed bays each subdivided into two 
lesser ones, which open into the lateral chap- 
els and support the above-mentioned clere- 
story. The great arches spanning the nave 
transversely spring from attached piers 
formed of a semicircular half-column, with 
a slender square shaft on either side of it, 
all with a crochet capitals and rope-like 
mouldings to the vaulting ribs. 

At the time of my visit the walls and pil- 
lars were hung with well-worn crimson dra- 
pery bearing large gold crosses and sentences 
from the hymns Vexilla Regis prodeunt and 
Pange lingua gloriosi. 
Ill 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

A corbelled gallery at the east end of the 
nave on either side supports an organ in a 
case of pseudo-Gothic design painted white 
and relieved with gold. 

To the choir there is a stately ascent by 
twenty red marble steps, and on either side 
another flight communicating with the crypt, 
which has no central avenues of pillars and 
is, in consequence of its modernization, poor 
and uninteresting. All its two-light win- 
dows are glazed inside irrespective of their 
muUions, an unpleasant Italian trick. 

The rich marble balustrade which flanks 
the steps leading to the choir is returned 
north and south above the arches opening 
into the crypt, and surmounted by six very 
handsome bronze candlesticks, which look 
remarkably well in their position. 

The stalls are carried completely round 
the eastern limb and apse; they have Corin- 
thian backs with paintings in the panels, and 
are surmounted by a sham balcony. The 
comparatively small high altar has a reredos 
consisting of four Corinthian columns and a 
round-headed centre with square wings, and 
over it hangs a baldachino of white and gold 
stuff. 



112 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

At half-past five on Whit-Tuesday I heard 
Vespers solemnly sung here. 

The three officiants were in crimson copes, 
and the cantors, similarly vested, v^ere at the 
lectern on the south side of the choir. The 
psalms v^^ere sung unaccompanied plain- 
chant-wise, but at the " Sicut erat in prin- 
cipio " to each Gloria Patri the organ broke 
in with very pleasing effect, continuing on 
into a short interlude between each psalm. 
The office Hymn was the Vent Creator Spi- 
ritus, and the Magnificat was sung to the 
sixth tone with light but not undevotional 
interludes. Vespers concluded, the organist 
decamped, leaving the clergy in the stalls 
behind the high altar to sing Compline as 
best they might. 

As an architectural monument the Cathe- 
dral of Vicenza falls considerably below the 
churches of La Sacra Corona and St. Lo- 
renzo. 

The former is a large cruciform brick 
church chiefly of thirteenth-century date, 
with one of those gabled west fronts mask- 
ing the ends of the lean-to aisles that are of 
such frequent occurrence in Italy. The cen- 
tral compartment of the front, i. e., that cor- 



113 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

responding to the nave, displays a very large 
circular window with wheel-like tracery 
forming sixteen divisions, and a doorway 
whose pointed arch rises from square and 
clustered cylindrical shafts with a crochet 
capitals. 

A modern sculpture of the cross encircled 
with the crown of thorns occupies the tym- 
panum, while the lintel bears the legend, 
Tuam coronam adoramus, Domine. In the 
compartment at the end of either aisle is a 
long two-light window, with a traceried 
cross-bar or transom at mid-height, such as 
we see in the apses of the two great Venetian 
churches of SS. Giovanni e Paolo and the 
Frari. Tht west front of a short lean-to 
aisle or chapel on the south side, abutting on 
a very graceful open porch, shows a tre- 
foiled lancet. There are four bays to the 
nave, the columns being cylinders with cubi- 
form capitals reminiscent of an earlier style; 
but the column at the junction of the nave 
and transept is octagonal with the oblique 
sides narrower than the cardinal ones. Here 
the capitals are of the stiff-leafed or a cro- 
chet kind, and as there is no central tower 
requiring a great mass of pier to support it, 
these isolated octagonal columns have a pe- 
114 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

culiar effect similar to that produced by 
those beautifully clustered ones in the same 
position at Exeter, where, it will be remem- 
bered, the towers partly form the transepts. 
From the capitals of the nave piers at La 
Corona rise pilaster-like shafts supporting 
the plain, wide transverse arches of the 
quadripartite vaulting. The triforium is ab- 
sent, and the bare expanse of wall between 
the nave arcades and the clerestory windows 
is an unpleasant, and by no means infre- 
quent, Italian-Gothic feature. The clere- 
story is of good height, the heads of its two- 
light windows, with shafts coupled trans- 
versely, following the lines of the vaulting. 
There is no clerestory to the first bay of the 
eastern limb, its arch rising to the same 
height as those opening into the transepts. 
Beyond this there is a short unpierced bay 
containing the steps leading up to the choir 
and down to the crypt. An apse without 
radiating chapels, and lighted by blunt- 
headed lancet windows, transomed at mid- 
height like those in the choir of the Duomo, 
terminates the whole; the division between 
the eastern limb and the apse being marked 
by an arch rising from two attached half- 
columns with foliaged capitals. 
115 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Some of the best modern stained glass I 
saw in Italy fills the narrow lancets of the 
apse, the tinctures of the full-length figures 
of saints therein represented being unusually 
brilliant and good. 

My ecclesiological studies at St. Lorenzo 
were impeded by the works of restoration 
which, at the time of my visit, were going 
on in the interior. Like La Corona, St. Lo- 
renzo is a cruciform church without much 
beauty of external outline, but here the aisles 
are much loftier, and the western fagade re- 
sembles that of the Cathedral, comprising 
seven pointed arches on square piers extend- 
ing completely across its lower portion, and 
a large rose window surmounted by smaller 
ones which follow the great gable of the 
upper one. The three central arches are 
interrupted by a very noble and deeply re- 
cessed portal, whose gable reaches nearly to 
the whole height of this lower stage of the 
fagade, while in each of the two on either 
side is one of those tombs which, corbelled 
off from the wall and surmounted by a ga- 
bled arch commensurate in depth, are of 
such frequent occurrence on the exteriors of 
Italian-Gothic churches. Within, the ar- 
cade assumes much loftier proportions than 
116 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

that of the Corona church, pointed arches 
rising from gracefully proportioned cylin- 
drical pillars, the carving of whose capitals 
is of somewhat ambiguous design, at one 
time looking like shells, at another like flow- 
ers. 

The other churches that I saw in Vicenza 
are in the Renaissance style and, although 
imposing from their grand dimensions and 
the richness of their furniture, do not call 
for any special description. St. Stefano is 
a Corinthian edifice with an aisleless nave, 
transepts, short apsidal sanctuary, in the apse 
of which is placed the organ, while a well- 
proportioned dome rises at the intersection. 
There was an Exposition of the Blessed Sac- 
rament when I visited this church during 
the afternoon; several ecclesiastics in albs 
and crimson tippets were engaged in private 
devotion at desks placed within the sanctu- 
ary rails, and some tapers burned upon the 
high altar. 

At night the interior was a scene of much 
gorgeousness, a result towards which the 
crimson damask hangings on the walls and 
pillars largely contributed. The altar was 
a perfect blaze of lights, and when at cer- 
tain parts of the service the acolytes tossed 
117 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

up their thuribles, and the priests in their 
fine copes grouped themselves in the sanctu- 
ary, the effect was really imposing, and, 
when the usual confusion attendant upon the 
hiring of chairs had subsided, the service 
was restful. The Te Deum, solemnly sung 
to the plain chant and in concerted parts in 
alternate verses, was tolerable; but the Tan- 
turn Ergo was to that slip-shod version of 
the melody which I heard everywhere in 
Italy, albeit the congregation joined in it 
with considerable vigour and with impress- 
ive effect. 

St. Stefano at Vicenza has four remark- 
ably fine and sonorous bells, which, in ac- 
cordance with Italian usage, were rung in- 
termittently for nearly an hour before the 
service began. Their voices, however, alter- 
nated very agreeably with those of the choir 
whom I heard rehearsing the music for the 
forthcoming service in the adjacent song 
school, as I strolled about the Piazza sur- 
rounding the church under the starlit sky 
of a still June night. 



i 



118 



CHAPTER IV 
PADUA 

" It was heat and midday," when, on 
Wednesday in Whitsun week, I reached 
Padua, that city of domes, wall-paintings 
and endless perspectives of colonnades, that 
" Urbem Patavi sedesque Teucrorum," and 
reflected with no little exultation that I 
Stood, so to speak, on the confines of Greek 
and Latin literature, in a city that derives 
its origin from a catastrophe celebrated in 
itself or in its consequences by the two great- 
est poets of antiquity. 

A picturesque but in some places deserted- 
looking city is Padua, with arcaded streets 
and many bridges crossing the various 
branches of the Bacchiglione, which once 
surrounded the ancient walls. 

The Palazzo della Ragione, with its great 

hall on the upper floor, is reputed to have 

the largest roof unsupported by columns in 

Europe. In plan it is nearly a rectangle, 

119 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

26yi feet long by 89 broad, and 78 high. 
The walls are covered with symbolical 
paintings in fresco, and the whole stands 
upon arches, the upper story being sur- 
rounded by an open loggia not unlike that of 
the great basilica at Vicenza. 

Begun in 1172 it was not completed until 
1306, when it was roofed by the skill of Gio- 
vanni, an Augustinian friar. Originally it 
had three roofs spanning three chambers, into 
which the hall was at first divided. The in- 
ternal partition walls remained until a fire 
in 1420, when a Venetian architect who un- 
dertook the restoration of the building re- 
moved them, throwing all three compart- 
ments into one and forming the present huge 
pillarless expanse. Viewed at a distance the 
roof looks like the inverted hull of some 
great ship. 

The Cathedral of Padua, which by the way 
is built with the apse to the west, is a large, 
naked and unfinished church designed in re- 
vived classical by Michael Angelo. It is 
cruciform with a dome which seems poor 
and unsatisfactory in effect. There is an 
(ecclesiologically) western transept sur- 
mounted by a smaller dome, and a miser- 
able unfinished brick fagade. Internally the 
120 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Cathedral is spacious but quite uninteresting 
architecturally. The stalls are behind the 
high altar and are triple. 

The high altar has two faces, but neither 
super-altar nor reredos, but a baldachino is 
suspended above it. 

The transepts are fitted up like choirs, and 
there are two organs. 

However, there are some relics of the ear- 
lier building in the shape of an extremely 
good recumbent effigy of a bishop, and a 
high tomb bracketed on the wall with half- 
figures of saints in bold relief in quatrefoils 
on the sides. There is another equally good 
tomb bracketed on the east wall of the south 
transept. 

Of far greater interest is the thirteenth- 
century Lombard Baptistery, or Church of 
St. Giovanni Battista, adjacent to the south- 
west, really northeast, end of the Cathedral. 
In plan it is a square for some height, then 
becoming circular and surmounted by a 
dome masked externally by high walls like 
that at Parma only on a much more modest 
scale. On the eastern face of the square is 
a low projection constituting a chancel with 
an altar under a smaller dome, seen rising 
out of the roof of a lean-to roofed building 
121 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

commensurate in length and pierced at its 
southeast angle with a porch. The walls are 
of brick, with very few openings, and are 
recessed in panels between surface-buttresses 
and engrailed corbel tables. 

In the centre of the building stands the 
font, cylindrical and bearing on its cover a 
figure of St. John the Baptist. Frescoes of 
much beauty and excellence enrich the entire 
walls. In the middle of the large dome is 
a half-figure of our Lord in the attitude of 
benediction, clothed in light pink, with a 
mantle of light blue, and holding an open 
book thus inscribed, Ego sum AXl Primus et 
Nolvisstmus'\. All around there is a hier- 
archy, the blessed being arranged in circles 
and the Virgin Mary appearing in an aure- 
ole. Scenes from the Creation and Biblical 
history are depicted in the tambour, while 
the pendentives display the Evangelists and 
their symbols. The southern wall of the 
square portion has the following scenes from 
the life of St. John the Baptist: the Angel's 
Visit to Zacharias; Birth of St. John; he is 
brought to Zacharias; Preaches in the Des- 
ert; Baptizes our Lord; Lies in Prison; 
Certain Miracles; Herod's Feast; The Dec- 
ollation of St. John; his Head carried on 
122 



PADUA 

Interior of St. Giovanni Battista 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the Charger. On the west side — taking the 
chancel as the east — are the Annunciation, 
Presentation, Visitation, Herod's cruelty, the 
Dispute of the Doctors, the Procession of 
Palms and the Last Supper, besides the 
Blessed Virgin under a canopy and St. John 
the Baptist. 

On the north side we see the Nativity, 
Epiphany, Circumcision, Call of St. Peter, 
of St. Matthew, the Marriage at Cana and 
three scenes from the Passion. 

The remaining side has the Flight into 
Egypt, the Transfiguration, the Crucifixion, 
so placed that it forms the central subject 
over the arch opening into the chancel, the 
Entombment, the Resurrection and the As- 
cension. The small dome, over the chancel, 
has a half-figure of our Lord in the middle 
surrounded by the Blessed Virgin and the 
twelve Apostles. Subjects from the Apoca- 
lypse enrich the side walls, and behind the 
altar there is a reredos painted with many 
saints in compartments on a gold ground. 

These wall paintings in the Baptistery of 
the Duomo at Padua have been ascribed to 
Giusto di Giovanni de Menabuoi, called 
Padovano, or Justus of Padua, a Florentine 
of the fourteenth century, whose only au- 
123 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

thenticated picture is a small triptych in the 
National Gallery, London, having as its cen- 
tral subject the Coronation of the Virgin; 
but they have now been declared to be the 
works of two unimportant painters who were 
probably his pupils — Giovanni and An- 
tonio da Padova — to whom are likewise 
due the frescoes in the Chapel of St. Luke 
at St. Antonio. 

Taken as a whole, the ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture of Padua must be pronounced very 
inferior, but in compensation we have the 
remarkable wall paintings by which not only 
the baptistery just described is adorned, but 
also the little Chapel of the Arena, and the 
adjacent Church of the Eremitani. 

It is at Padua and Assisi that Giotto's chief 
works are to be found. Some remain at 
Rome, and at Ravenna one of the most beau- 
tiful contrasts in the world is in St. Giovanni 
Evangelista, where one of the chapels is dec- 
orated like the Arena Chapel at Padua with 
Giotto's blue backgrounds and lovely faces. 
His greatest architectural monument is the 
Campanile at Florence; the Arena Chapel 
at Padua affords an idea of the universality 
of his powers as a colourist. To this day no 
man has excelled or can excel the qualities of 
124 






1 



PADUA 
Chapel of the Arena 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the blonde faces one sees at Padua and Ra- 
venna: his blues, warm whites, golden tints 
on hair and ornaments, with many subtle uses 
of Indian red or other pigments and various 
greens, are all matters of professional study 
to this day. 

Nowhere can the subject of painted w^all 
decoration be more advantageously studied 
than in Italy. In English, French and Ger- 
man buildings we find it in a very fragmen- 
tary state from decay and intentional oblit- 
eration, but in those of Italy we may study it 
in its integrity. Besides this, the Italians 
having always excelled as colourists, the in- 
trinsic merits of these decorations may fairly 
be supposed to be such as to command our 
special attention. 

These details, however, can hardly be gen- 
erally recommended to direct imitation, be- 
ing very materially derived from classic or- 
nament, and they were frequently guilty of 
the modern sin of shamming, their decora- 
tions often representing marble of different 
kinds, mouldings and mosaics. 

The bands or orders of ornamental work 
with which they framed their frescoes or di- 
vided the surfaces of wall or ceilings, and 
with which they edged their windows or the 
125 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

compartments of groined vaulting, are often 
peculiarly beautiful in their treatment, and 
though bearing strong marks of the antique 
have furnished many a useful hint for those 
who have come later. 

Their mode of introducing small busts of 
saints in fresco in quatrefoils at intervals in 
their borders and in circles in the vaulting is 
peculiarly beautiful, and has been adopted in 
English work since the Gothic Revival, 
where a more extended use of fresco has 
been found impossible. 

Fresco painting, properly so-called, can 
only be studied in Italy. It is the great glory 
of medieval art in that country, and in many 
cases buildings seem to have been designed 
expressly as a field for artistic decoration of 
the highest order, as for instance in this little 
Arena Chapel at Padua, the depository of the 
freshest and on the whole the most delightful 
works of Giotto. Indeed, its walls resemble 
pages from an illuminated manuscript. 

Although studiously simple, few buildings 
in Italian Pointed can exceed in interest the 
little chapel of Sta. Maria dell' Arena at 
Padua, which was not only painted but de- 
signed by Giotto, who is said to have been 
aided by Dante in the choice of designs. In 
126 



! 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

plan it is an oblong nave, with a chancel of 
one bay besides an unequal three-sided apse, 
about half the breadth of the nave. The 
chancel is groined; its north wall has a door 
(at its extreme west end) into a sacristy, be- 
yond which are four miserere seats, well 
carved, with a stone canopy. There are five 
such seats against the south wall, and a pis- 
cina west of them all, facing the sacristy 
door. The broadest side of the apse is blank, 
but has a rood, but the oblique sides have 
single lancet lights with broad splays. The 
heads of these lancets are not pierced, but 
fitted with a plain surface of stone, below 
which are pierced openings, with square 
cinquefoiled tops.* Under each of these 
windows are two stone seats, presumably for 
sedilia. The altar stands detached from the 
wall in the apse, and there is an ascent to it 
of three steps guarded on each side by rails 
of wrought iron, with sockets for tapers 
along the top. The chancel arch is pointed, 
of two plain orders, merely marked at the 
impost by a band of floral mouldings on the 
hollow chamfered under-edge of an abacus. 

* These windows are examples of the plate form of tracery 
in its simplest conditions, a system at once simple, natural 
and effective. 

127 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The north side of the nave has no win- 
dows; the south has six blunt-pointed lan- 
cets, and the west end a three-light window 
above the only door. The windows mostly 
retain their ancient Venetian glazing — 
small circular panes of thick glass; but rem- 
nants of rich figured glass exist sufficient to 
show that it originally filled the windows, 
and its absence gives a somewhat cold, crude 
tone to the decorations. 

The roof is coved, painted in azure with 
gold stars and relieved by medallions con- 
taining half-figures of our Lord and the 
Blessed Virgin. 

The arrangement of the nave is remark- 
able. The chancel being so much narrower 
than the nave, there is a considerable wall- 
space on either side of the chancel arch. An 
altar stands against each of these wall spaces, 
raised on a platform besides a foot-pace. 
Westward of these are six stalls on each side, 
with subsellcB contained within low solid 
screens about breast high. 

Thus there is a chorus cantorum locally] 
situated in the nave, besides the chancel. A 
few feet further to the west are two more 
solid, but low, screens, between which and 
the eastern screens on each side are rises of 
128 



1 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

steps to a platform at the level of the top of 
the screen. 

There is a revolving lectern on the east 
face of each platform and two more altars, 
one on each side on the west face of the west- 
ern-most screens which support sockets. In 
the roof above is a large hole, pointing to 
the probability of a rood beam having once 
spanned the chapel at this point. 

It is not quite certain at what date Giotto 
went to Padua, but this Scrovegno Chapel 
in the old arena of the city was not built 
until 1303, and it was its founder, Enrico 
Scrovegno, a noble citizen, who employed 
Giotto to decorate it. 

The undertaking was an arduous one, but 
the result was equal to the opportunity, and 
this great decorative work at Padua may be 
looked upon as the culminating expression 
of Giotto's art. 

Nowhere do we find his ideal of concise 
directness of representation more successfully 
expressed than is the case here, and nowhere 
do we find him reaching a similar perfection 
in the presentation of form and movement. 
The entire decoration of this charming little 
edifice takes a foremost place among the 
wonders of medieval art, but to enter into 
129 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

a detailed description of the numerous sub- 
jects would here be impossible. The " Last 
Judgement " alone would offer material suffi- 
cient for an almost endless study. The influ- 
ence of Dante was no doubt strong in Giotto 
at the time when he painted this great 
" doom," and it is conceived in quite a Dan- 
tesque style. 

Briefly, the iconography of the chapel is 
as follows: 

Commencing at the west end of the nave, 
which is entirely frescoed without a single 
string-course or moulding, we have above 
the entrance the " Last Judgement." Our 
Lord, in an oval aureole, vested in pink with 
a white mantle, is surrounded by the apostles 
seated on thrones. St. Mary is not enthroned, 
but stands in an aureole at the head of the 
redeemed. Two angels, vested with crossed 
stoles, bear the cross of the T-form. Scro- 
vegno, the founder of the chapel, is seen be- 
low offering a model of it to our Lord. 
Three flying angels receive it from him. 

Over the chancel arch is the " Annuncia- 
tion " ; but to describe all the subjects in de- 
tail would require a separate chapter. Suf- 
fice it to say that they are not only very nu- 
merous and very beautiful, but constitute 
130 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

quite an epitome of sacred history. Our 
Lord is generally vested in a light pink robe 
with an upper mantle of light blue, both 
edged with gold. The under-vestment is 
seamless, and like a dalmatic in shape. St. 
Mary is always in light blue edged with 
gold. 

The treatment of the " Resurrection " is 
uncommonly grand and beautiful; the vest- 
ments of the Saviour are white and gold, and 
the attendant angels are represented in copes. 
It should be observed that our Lord's nimbus 
is always cruciferous. One of the most beau- 
tiful figures in the " Crucifixion " group is 
that of the Magdalene. Equally well treated 
are the " Descent from the Cross " and the 
" Ascension." 

In the " Day of Pentecost " the Twelve 
Apostles only are present, the Blessed Virgin 
not being introduced. The basement of the 
walls is painted, not in subjects, but in alle- 
gorical or symbolic figures of the Virtues 
and Vices intermixed into architectural com- 
partments, presenting imitations of marble, 
panelling, etc., with borders closely resem- 
bling those executed in mosaic upon the 
tomb of Edward the Confessor in Westmin- 
ster Abbey, a species of decoration that ap- 
131 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

pears to have found much favour amongst 
the Italian artists of Giotto's time, as it ap- 
pears in the papal chapel at Avignon, 
painted in his style or by his school. 

The northern v^all of the chancel shows us 
the "Repose of the Blessed Virgin"; the 
southern one her burial and assumption. By 
the altar are various saints, and in the wall 
behind the sedilia there is a charming figure 
of our Lady with the Holy Infant. Here 
the Virgin is vested in a light blue robe, 
under a cope, and a white veil. In the tym- 
panum of the sacristy door is a striking half- 
figure of our Lord being mocked. 

All these frescoes in the chancel are infe- 
rior to those in the nave, and supposed by 
some to be by Taddeo di Bartolo of Siena, 
but, from the close approach to Giotto's own 
style, they are more likely to be the work 
of his pupil, Taddeo Gaddi. 

In close proximity to this little fourteenth- 
century Chapel of the Arena stands the 
Church of the Eremitani, dedicated to SS. 
Philip, James and Augustine, more remark- 
able for its frescoes by Guariento in the great 
apse, and those by Mantegna in the chapel 
opening out of the south transept, than for 
much beauty as a specimen of late thirteenth- 
132 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

century architecture. For, like St. Fermo 
and others in Verona, it is one of those huge 
aisleless churches built for the use and con- 
venience of an order of preachers, and not 
for receiving a number of altars. 

It consists merely of a nave, 300 feet long, 
covered with a roof of wood, massy and sim- 
ple, of trefoil shape, boarded and panelled 
so as to hide the construction. There are 
also many interesting tombs, but perhaps the 
greatest treasure enshrined in this church is 
the altarpiece in the large chapel of SS. 
Christopher and James, so remarkable for 
the great beauty and purity of its design as 
to have excited the admiration of all com- 
petent critics, but which appears to have 
been executed by a sculptor of whom almost 
nothing is known, and of whom it is not 
recorded that we possess any other work. 
Originally executed in terra-cotta, now 
coated with a brown varnish which causes 
it to look like bronze, this altarpiece was 
carved about 145 1 by Giovanni da Pisa, a 
companion and disciple of Donatello, who 
accompanied him to Padua at that time. 
This chapel contains some early but very 
fine frescoes of the painter Andrea Man- 
tegna, and it would seem that this great mas- 
133 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ter's style had largely influenced the mind 
of the sculptor, if it did not furnish the de- 
sign, as it is impossible to avoid being struck 
by the great similarity of treatment and char- 
acter in the sculpture to the works of the 
painter. 

In the centre of the retable is the Madonna 
seated in a high-backed throne of quite clas- 
sical severity. On either side are three 
standing figures. Those immediately in at- 
tendance on the Virgin and the divine Infant 
are St. John the Baptist and St. Philip, who 
occupy a curve made by what is apparently 
a hanging of some textile fabric, and which 
forms the background to the figures on either 
side of the throne. To the right of the spec- 
tator are St. Christopher with the Infant 
Christ on his shoulder, and St. James the 
Less; to the right are two figures in mon- 
astic habit, one representing St. Augustine, 
to whom the church is conjointly dedicated. 

In shape this retable is an oblong quite 
free from architectural accessories, and on 
this account is apt to be overlooked by the 
visitor, dazzled and absorbed by Mantegna's 
superb paintings. It is a work singular for 
the purity of the composition in which, while 
partly retaining the antique mode of distri- 
134 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

bution and its simplicity, we will observe a 
variety of motives, and a certain grace and 
naturalness by which the observer finds him- 
self beyond measure charmed by the atti- 
tudes, by the beautiful draperies, by the in- 
telligent anatomy, and thence he recognizes 
an art much more mature than would at first 
appear. Indeed for refinement and dignity 
of treatment this retable in the chapel of SS. 
Christopher and James in the Eremitani 
Church at Padua is worthy of a place 
amongst the best specimens of the first half 
of the fifteenth century. 

At precisely what date Mantegna began 
the paintings in this chapel attached to the 
Eremitani Church at Padua — the work by 
which he is best known — we have no cer- 
tain knowledge; but they may be placed 
approximately between 1448 and 1455. The 
commission for the decoration of this chapel 
had been given to Squarcione and his disciples 
by the Ovetari family, and it is probable that 
much of the work had already been begun 
when Mantegna assumed the responsibility. 
The following are only by his hand : On the 
left wall, " The Baptism of Hermogenes," 
" St. James before Caesar," " St. James led 
to Execution" and "The Martyrdom of St. 
135 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

James"; on the right wall, "The Martyr- 
dom of St. Christopher" and "The Re- 
moval of his Body." 

Taken in the above order a steady evolu- 
tion may be traced from an academic and 
somewhat rigid style to a free and natural 
treatment of form. Composition and effect 
show a similar development. 

The fame of these frescoes in the Church 
of the Eremitani spread rapidly, and Man- 
tegna became undisputed chief of the Pad- 
uan painters. His genius was recognized 
and applauded by princes and scholars. 
Books were dedicated to him and poems 
composed in his honour. To this period of 
his career (c. 1460) belongs the altarpiece 
representing the Madonna enthroned in St. 
Zeno at Verona. 

Mantegna's wall painting was never fresco 
in the true sense of the word, but is done on 
the dry plaster, a process to which their pres- 
ent dilapidated condition is due. His influ- 
ence, not only upon Italian art but through- 
out Germany, was immense. Through him 
alone the Paduan school of painting attained 
independence, and few painters have left 
stronger or more beneficial effects upon con- 
temporary art than Mantegna. Not a school 
136 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

in Italy remained untouched by his influ- 
ence. 

Padua possesses the earliest dated work of 
Mantegna, the fresco representing SS. An- 
tonio and Bernardino over the western portal 
of the church dedicated to the former saint, 
and to which we must now turn our atten- 
tion. Early as it is, we find in this embel- 
lishment to the great false front given by 
Niccola Pisano to his extraordinary creation 
— a front in which everything is sacrificed 
to breadth of effect — that perfection of 
technique, mastery of perspective and plas- 
ticity of modelling which distinguishes Man- 
tegna's works throughout. The fact that 
when only twenty-four he was employed in 
the three principal churches of Padua proves 
that Mantegna's powers were fully recog- 
nized. 

St. Antonio at Padua Is one of those build- 
ings met with in many countries which pre- 
sent all manner of anomalous characters, 
separating themselves from the other struc- 
tures of the same age and nation, and per- 
plexing investigation. The anomalous ap- 
pearance of this church would appear to 
have arisen from the attempt of an Italian 
Gothic architect to imitate other churches, 
137 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

notably St. Mark's, Venice. It belongs to an 
early period of the style, having been in 
course of construction between 1231 and 
1300, from the designs of Niccola Pisano. 
Of the origin of this architect, who was born 
in 1205, but little is known, but that little 
is something wonderful if we are to credit 
the statement that already, when only about 
fifteen years old, the Emperor Frederick II 
made him his architect, and took him to 
Naples, where he was employed on the castle 
which that Emperor was building there. At 
the age of twenty-six we find him going to 
Padua to build St. Antonio, and then to 
Arezzo to build St. Domenico. Then we 
find him developing his skill as a sculptor, 
executing pulpits for Pisa and Siena, and 
designing, and with the powerful aid of his 
son Giovanni executing, the great fountain 
at Perugia. The upper part of the lovely 
fagade of the Cathedral at Ferrara is like- 
wise due to Pisano, who may be styled the 
Vilars de Honnecourt of Italy. He visits 
Venice, studies St. Mark's as a preparative 
for his first great work, St. Antonio at 
Padua, picking up ideas where he can, and 
adapting them to his own purpose. He 
thinks the group of domes at St. Mark's 
138 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

might be improved if they were loftier, and 
if one were in some way more striking than 
the rest; then, recollecting the great cone 
which covers the central portion of the cir- 
cular Baptistery at Pisa, he, with striking 
effect, places it in the centre of this group 
of domes. 

Then he may have paid a visit to Miin- 
ster in Westphalia, where the great Cathe- 
dral was then growing to its present shape, 
and to certain of the French churches where 
their architects were producing those inimi- 
table apses with procession paths and coronse 
of chapels, and determines to imitate them; 
which he does though in a clumsy and ill- 
conceived manner at Padua, for they are as 
badly designed a succession of square chap- 
els as they well can be; nevertheless, in the 
following century, they seem to have been 
the model on which the never-to-be-com- 
pleted choir of St. Petronio at Bologna was 
to have been founded. 

The fagade, with its gable screening the 
whole width of the church and its five shal- 
low pointed arches, surmounted by an ar- 
caded gallery, recalls the outlines of the 
Greek churches with which he was familiar, 
and seems to have been pretty closely imi- 
139 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tated in this part of the country, notably at 
Vicenza, as we have seen in the facades of 
the Duomo and St. Lorenzo. 

The whole group of domes and steeples at 
St. Antonio surpasses any of those which had 
been erected somewhat on the same lines 
before Pisano's time in Lombardy and along 
the courses of the Rhine and Main, though 
to the educated eye the whole exterior has 
an uncomfortably crowded look. 

Thus grew this great church, the Mecca 
of Northern Italy. In spite of all interest 
it lacks the impress of a really great archi- 
tectural hand, and cannot be compared for a 
moment with the far more refined and scien- 
tific churches which the French had been 
building for a quarter of a century before 
its foundation; but the grouping of the ex- 
ternal outline, a point seldom regarded by 
the early Italian architects, is undeniably 
remarkable. 

One of the best views of the exterior is 
to be had from the great cloister on the south 
side of the nave. There are four ambula- 
tories: the eastern and western ones are 
shorter than the northern and southern, and 
their arcades looking on to the quadrangle 
have, like those in most North Italian clois- 
140 



PADUA 

St. Antonio 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ters of the same period, wide pointed arches 
without tracery, springing from tall cylin- 
drical shafts with capitals of the stiff-leafed 
kind. The shaft at the angle of each am- 
bulatory is, however, an octagon, built in 
alternate layers of green marble and white 
stone, and has a much more elaborately 
worked capital. The north and west walks 
have lean-to roofs of tiles, the other two are 
surmounted by domestic buildings. The 
apse of a chapel opening out of the south 
aisle of the nave projects into the northern 
walk, while from the eastern one a pointed 
doorway with simply moulded jambs and 
three uncarved capitals, and flanked on 
either side by three pointed arcades on cylin- 
drical shafts with foliaged capitals, admits 
to the chapter house, which measures 50 feet 
from north to south. At the south end of 
the same walk a very plain pointed arch 
admits to another great cloister, with even 
loftier arcades of the same type as in the one 
just described. 

Internally St. Antonio at Padua is not only 
one of the coldest, but for the period of its 
construction, one of the plainest churches of 
my acquaintance in this part of Italy, de- 
riving its impressiveness mainly from its 
141 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

great size and unencumbered area. No- 
where is sculptural ornamentation visible, 
for there can be no doubt that the architect 
intended it for that wall decoration in which, 
to judge from such fragments as have been 
brought to light on denuding them of their 
whitewash, it must have been extremely rich. 

Designs for an elaborate scheme of colour- 
ation are hung up in the nave, and progress 
is now being made with that of the choir 
which, at the time of my visit, was so encum- 
bered with scaffolding as to impede any re- 
searches into the architecture of that part 
of the church. 

A commencement of stained glass on the 
model of that in some of the great Northern 
French cathedrals has been made, and the 
great roses of the eastern transepts, so re- 
markable for their rectilinear tracery, and 
the lancets which light the choir and the 
wall above the arches opening from the pro- 
cession path into the chapels, have received 
their complement. 

The arcades surrounding the choir are 
very lofty, and their piers, being huge elon- 
gated ones, recall those in such churches of 
French Flanders as St Omer and Tournai. 
One arch opens into the transept and the 
142 






The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

lesser one to the east of it, while each of the 
two great domed compartments composing 
the nave are subdivided by a pair of pointed 
arches on piers of the simplest description. 
A passageway protected by a balcony of pil- 
larets is formed above these arches, and high 
up in the surmounting wall are windows of 
two lights each, in couples. Across the great 
arch opening from the central dome into the 
transept is a screen of open arches, Pointed 
on the south and early Renaissance on the 
north. The former admit to the chapel of 
St. Felix, rich in restored wall paintings by 
Jacopo Avanzi and Altichieri da Zevio 
(1376); the latter to the chapel containing 
the shrine and altar of the patron, before 
which a goodly number of devotees were 
always gathered, and lamps and candles in- 
cessantly burning. At this altar a succession 
of Masses was said up to eleven o'clock, 
when a fully choral one commenced, the 
Gregorian chant being impressively ren- 
dered by the brethren in the sumptuously 
fitted choir. 

The neighbouring great Renaissance Sta. 
Giustina was completed — in so far at least 
as its interior is concerned, upon one uni- 
form original design. In dimensions it sur- 
143 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

passes almost any other church of its age, 
excepting, of course, St. Peter's,^ and its pro- 
portions are remarkably harmonious and 
pleasing. 

There is, however, a plainness almost 
amounting to rudeness, in its details which 
are not only too large and coarse for internal 
purposes, but is repeated usque ad nauseam 
throughout the interior. 

As a work of engineering science Sta. 
Giustina may be called a good and appro- 
priate specimen, but as a work of art it fails, 
chiefly because, though the design is orna- 
mental, the church itself is by no means or- 
nate. Its outline is grand and well propor- 
tioned, though monotonous, but it is deficient 
in that grace and elegance of detail which 
would bring it within the domain of archi- 
tecture as a fine art, and without which a 
building remains the work of an engineer 
or a builder. 

Evidently Sta. Giustina had for its pattern 
the neighbouring St. Antonio, and internally 
presents a fine alternation of arch and dome. 
In its accessory system it employs the pilas- 

* The dimensions of Sta. Giustina are as follows: Length, 
500 feet; breadth, 140 feet; breadth at transept, 350 feet; 
height, 120 feet; the central dome, 265 feet. 

144 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ter, always less unpleasant in this position 
than the engaged column, but as a composi- 
tion perhaps the Cathedral is preferable. 

Here we have only two domes, one at the 
crossing and one at the west end separated 
by a cylindrical vault springing from a mass 
which contains two arches with pilasters be- 
tween them, and crowned with an entabla- 
ture. A similar space intervenes between 
each dome and the corresponding end of the 
church. The imposts of the arches are here 
plain, instead of being, as at Sta. Giustina, 
repetitions on a small scale of the large pilas- 
ters. 

Addison, who set out upon the Grand 
Tour in 1699 with a purse full of guineas, 
and the reputation of being the most elegant 
scholar of his day, visited Padua in due 
course, where he seems to have been much 
struck with Sta. Giustina, which he describes 
in his Remarks on Italy as " the most hand- 
some, luminous, disencumbered building in 
the inside that I have ever seen, and is es- 
teemed by artists one of the finest works in 
Italy. The long nave consists of a row of 
five cupolas; the cross one on each side has 
a single cupola deeper and broader than the 
others." 

145 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Addison's description as to the luminosity 
and unencumbered area of Sta. Giustina 
holds good at the present day. The pave- 
ment, perfectly clear of chairs or benches, 
is laid out in compartments of white and red 
marble, and its numerous altars with their 
decorations are in the same costly material. 
The whole appears like a church only just 
finished, so clean and neat is the air perva- 
ding everything; indeed as far as the en- 
semble goes I must own that of all the Re- 
naissance fabrics which I had the opportu- 
nity of examining during this tour, I was 
most delighted with the interior of Sta. Gius- 
tina at Padua. 

It displays the characteristic features of 
Palladian architecture to the highest advan- 
tage, and in a manner not often witnessed 
even in Italy. It was, if I am not mistaken, 
begun on the plan of Palladio in 1502 from 
the designs of Padre Girolamo da Brescia, 
and completed half a century later under 
Andrea Morone.^ Some defects consequently 
occur in the execution which ought not to be 
attributed to its illustrious originator, partic- 

^ With the exception of the facade, which, like that of the 
Cathedral, has never advanced beyond its lowest stage, the 
rest being a mere brick wall. 

j4a 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ularly as these defects are lost in the admi- 
rable symmetry and proportion of the whole; 
perfections owing exclusively to the genius 
that conceived and arranged the original 
model. On the whole Palladio may be con- 
sidered as the Vitruvius of revived classical 
architecture, and those desirous of studying 
the many monuments of Palladian skill that 
abound in Northern Italy cannot do better 
than make Vicenza and Padua their head- 
quarters. 

Like many another North Italian church 
Sta. Giustina was desecrated during the for- 
eign occupations, being turned into a flour 
magazine, the services intermitted, and the 
pictures covered. 

Padua may be called the City of Domes, 
it being quite the exception to find a church 
there without one. 

The manner in which this feature was in- 
troduced and adopted in Italy was so diverse 
in its causes and its results as to render the 
chronicling of it in any clear consecutive 
order very perplexing. 

There were, in fact, two distinct influences, 

both occasionally leading to its adoption. At 

Rome, and in places under Roman influence, 

such examples as the Pantheon could not fail 

147 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

to have their effect upon the architecture, 
and we accordingly find there numerous 
scions of the primeval family; w^hile the 
purely Byzantine forms were simultaneously 
introduced by way of Ravenna, and later on 
were planted at Venice. Through this two- 
fold influence the dome became very fre- 
quent throughout Italy. It was carried by 
Charlemagne from St. Vitalis at Ravenna to 
Aix-la-Chapelle, and later on was carried 
forward from Lombardy, under the first 
three Othos, across the Alps, down the valley 
of the Rhine and far into the interior of 
Germany. Only a few years later it was con- 
veyed from Venice into the interior of South- 
western France, whence it spread through 
an extensive district stretching eastward into 
Auvergne, even as far as Lyons, and north- 
wards to the banks of the Loire. 

In the thirteenth century we have several 
very graceful applications of the dome in 
Italy, notably in the baptisteries of Parma 
and Pisa, and when later on the great domed 
creations of Brunelleschi and Michael An- 
gelo had set the fashion, no church was here- 
after built in that country in which the dome 
did not constitute the leading feature in the 
design. 

148 



CHAPTER V 

ST. mark's, VENICE, AND TORCELLO 

It is in the peerless evening of Wednesday 
in Whitsun week of the year of grace just 
passed, that I traverse the dark narthex with 
its memories of Frederic Barbarossa and 
Alexander, ascend the marble steps and, 
drawing aside a curtain, realize what has 
been the aspiration of a lifetime, — to be- 
hold the fair beauty of the interior of St. 
Mark's, Venice, that vast museum filled with 
curious objects, collected with religious zeal 
and preserved with religious care ; that open 
lap of the Queen of the Adriatic into which 
the spoils of the East have been poured. 

An Office has lately been concluded, and 
some wreaths of incense cloud, " lingering 
as loth to die," hang about the mighty mo- 
saic-encrusted domes from which the images 
of Christ and His saints look down contin- 
ually. 

It is a shadowy dreamland, far away from 
149 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the noise and turmoil of the daytime, upon 
which I seem to enter this June afternoon. 

Twelve hours later, and I am again on my 
way to St. Mark's, gliding in the freshness 
of early morning along the Grand Canal in 
a gondola, with my attention riveted almost 
every moment by the splendid show on either 
side of this " silent highway." 

The long wave which the prow turns over 
is dashed against a wall of marble-fronted 
palaces, the names of which are carelessly 
mentioned by the gondolier, awakening trails 
of golden memories in the mind. High in 
the clear early morning atmosphere arise the 
campanili of the churches with which wealth 
and devotion have crowded the islands of 
Venice, and their bells are filling the air 
with a stream of undulating music, inviting 
the devout to early Mass. 

I disembark at the heart of Venice, the 
great open space in front of the Ducal Pal- 
ace, and enter the Cathedral, to enjoy an 
ecclesiological pleasure which I have often 
had before — to watch the rising sun bring- 
ing out more and more distinctly the form 
of some saint or angel, mystic form or sacred 
symbol. Gradually it brings into promi- 
nence those twelve apostles, guarding like 
150 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

calm sentinels the gate of heaven, as sym- 
bolized in the screen, while ever and anon 
the silvery tongue of the Sanctus bell pro- 
claims the Elevation of the Host. 

The Cathedral of Venice stands quite 
alone among the buildings of the world in 
respect of its unequalled richness of material 
and decoration, and also from the fact that it 
has been constructed with the spoils of count- 
less other buildings, and therefore forms a 
museum of sculpture of the most varied kind, 
nearly every century from the fourth down 
to the latest Renaissance being represented 
more or less largely. 

The grandeur of its interior amazes one at 
first, and delights all the more afterwards, as 
one becomes on more intimate terms with it, 
and can look at it with less emotion than at 
first. And how shall I describe it? — for 
that it has so many bays in length or in the 
width is not sufficient: all this, and even the 
detail of the design, was familiar enough to 
me before I saw it, but still the reality was 
so far beyond any description, that I felt, and 
feel still, averse to attempting it. 

During the early years of Venetian history 
the site of the present church and square of 
St. Mark was a large grassy field, with rows 
151 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of trees divided by a canal (which no longer 
exists) and containing two churches. One of 
them, dedicated to St. Theodore, the old pa- 
tron saint of Venice, stood a little to the 
north of the site of the present Cathedral of 
St. Mark. The other, that of St. Geminiano, 
was a little to the northwest of the great cam- 
panile. This church was built between 1173 
and 1 179 by Sebastiano Ziani, when he de- 
molished the original church in order to ex- 
tend the square westwards. In the sixteenth 
century it was again rebuilt by Cristoforo 
del Legname and Sansovino, and was des- 
troyed in 1805 by Napoleon to make room, 
for a new block to unite the two palaces ofj 
the procurators.^ 

The grassy campo where those churches 
stood was the property of the abbey of Staj 
Zaccaria. At the eastern extremity a smal( 
palace was built for the Doge about 8i( 
when Venice first became the chief ducal 
place of residence under Angelo Partici] 
patio. It was within the chapel of this ducal 
palace that the body of St. Mark was laid 
when, in 831, it was brought from Alexan- 
dria to Venice. 

^ The site of this church is still marked by a strip of red 
marble inlaid in the pavement of the Piazza San Marco. 

152 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Precedence of the more illustrious St. 
Mark's must be allowed to the beautiful old 
basilican cathedral in the neighbouring 
island of Torcello, to which the citizens of 
Altinum and Aquileia first fled from the bar- 
barian invaders of Northern Italy, and 
which became the parent-isle of the new 
State, seat of its first bishopric, and long 
maintained as a separate See under govern- 
ment alike independent; for Torcello had 
its own Podesta and Senate, in whom all 
ancient rights of its inhabitants were in- 
vested, thus preserving for them an auto- 
nomic existence till the fall of the Republic. 
Thither, in the first half of the seventh cen- 
tury did the Bishop of Altinum transfer his 
See, with the relics enshrined in its Cathe- 
dral, in the desire to withdraw from the rule 
and from the heretical intrusions of the 
Arian Longobards. 

The new cathedral was founded in or 
about A. D. 641 ; first restored, being already 
ruinous, a little more than two centuries later; 
and again almost entirely rebuilt by the 
Bishop Orseolo (son of the illustrious Doge, 
Pietro Orseolo) in 1008, to which date we 
must assign the present edifice, though it 
seems certain that the plan of the seventh 
153 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

century basilica was retained, and that many 
curious architectural details may be referred 
to one or other of the earlier structures. 

Torcello Cathedral is essentially Roman- 
esque in character, and has none of those 
Oriental features peculiar to other Venetian 
churches. Perhaps the structure to which 
it bears the closest resemblance is the sixth- 
century cathedral of Parenzo in Istria. 

At Torcello, the arrangement of the chan- 
cel and apse are perhaps its most remarkable 
features. The former features, and yet dif- 
fers from, those of Roman basilicas with its 
enclosure of marble screens, and two am- 
bones both on the same side. The whole 
area is separated from the apse itself by an 
intervening aisle, an arrangement quite con- 
trary to all precedents. Here the apse forms 
a wide semicircle, with six tiers of seats like 
those in the ancient amphitheatres, and the 
episcopal throne in the centre elevated on a 
high staircase, thus following out the pre- 
scription of the Apostolic Constitution: " In 
medio autem sit episcopi solium, et utrinque 
sedeat presbyterium." 

The stern, I had almost said ghastly, mo- 
saics on the walls of this ancient cathedral 
at Torcello may be referred to the tenth cen- 
154 



TORCELLO 

Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tury. Barbaric in conception as in execution, 
they illustrate the religious feeling and the 
propensity to dwell on gloomy and terrific 
ideas of the age that gave them birth. Here 
we see the Doom represented with numerous 
episodes of infernal punishment correspond- 
ing to the most dreadful visions of medieval 
mysticism, a charnel-house display of death 
and the grave, the Limbus and the Para- 
disus, and, among the figures rising to be 
judged, kings and emperors in Byzantine 
costume. The composition is perhaps the 
earliest example, at any rate in mosaic art, 
of the treatment ot a theme more commonly 
attempted in later times, though certainly 
beyond the range of all artistic capacities. 

It was not till the eleventh century that 
either the Last Judgement or the successive 
scenes of the Passion began to be generally 
preferred to those evangelico-historic groups, 
miracles of mercy, or sacramental types, on 
which the mind of the Church had rather 
loved to dwell, and which therefore had been 
the favourite representations in earlier ages. 

Several curious illustrations of Paganism 

in the Middle Ages may be discovered 

among the sculptured details of Torcello 

Cathedral, as, for instance, the reliefs on an 

155 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ambon, that apparently bear reference to the 
worship of Mercury; while among singular 
examples of symbolism, I would allude to a 
relief on the episcopal throne of a hand 
raised in benediction between the sun and 
moon, implying the Divine Presence. 

In the semi-dome of the great apse is a 
single figure of the Blessed Virgin robed in 
blue, on a gold ground, and holding the 
Divine Infant, whose nimbus is cruciferous 
and who is draped. The letters MP ©T — 
the first and last letters of her title, MHTHP 
©EOT, the Mother of God — are on each 
side of her, and below is this legend. Formula 
virtutis, maris astrum, porta sal [utisj the 
word is interrupted by the single window of 
the apse] Prole Maria levat quos conjuge 
subdidit Eva. In the spandrils of the arch 
opening into the apse are the figures of the 
Angel Gabriel and the Blessed Virgin, rep- 
resenting the Annunciation, and round the 
arch is inscribed the following beautiful 
legend: Sum Deus atque caro: Patris et 
sum matris imago: Non piger ad lapsum, 
sed flenti proximus, adsum. 

On either side of the apse window are six 
figures of Apostles, and under the window in 
the middle is a half-figure of St. Heliodorus. 
156 






The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The southern apse has mosaics of our Lord 
seated, in the act of blessing, and holding a 
closed book, between St. Michael and St. 
Gabriel. Below are St. Gregory, St. Augus- 
tine, St. Ambrose and St. Martin; and 
above, the Agnus Dei and two angels. 

Sta. Fosca, on the same island, is probably 
coeval with the Cathedral, to which it is 
joined by the loggia which extends along the 
western side of the latter. Though the pre- 
cise date of its origin is unknown, Sta. Fosca 
must be referred to the tenth century at the 
latest, being mentioned in an extant deed, 
dated ion, in the name of two ladies who 
endowed it with some lands. 

Like St. Mark's it is a monument of that 
veneration for relics once so ascendantly 
potent in the Italian mind, having been built 
expressly as a shrine for the remains of Sta. 
Fosca, a virgin of noble birth who, together 
with her nurse, Maura, suffered martyrdom 
at Ravenna during the Decian persecution. 

The plan of Sta. Fosca is that of the 
Greek cross associated with the cupola of 
Oriental character, and in the architectonic 
ornaments we perceive a blending of the 
Byzantine with the Arabic that illustrates 



157 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the early influence of the Moslem over the 
Christian taste. 

The eastern limb of the cross is a bay 
longer than the others, and each of its aisles 
terminates in an apse. Along five sides of 
the exterior are carried double porticoes 
with high stilted arches and columns, whose 
antique shafts, unequal in proportion, are 
fitted to barbaric capitals. 

The interior presents an effect harmonious 
and graceful, and has happily suffered but 
little in the course of the several restorations 
carried out here, the earliest dating from 
1247. Selvatico, a learned writer on Vene- 
tian monuments, draws attention to the 
points of similarity existing between Sta. 
Fosca and certain churches at Athens, and 
finds in the former the substitution of the 
Greek for the Latin type with remarkable 
clearness. But to return to St. Mark's. 

The Church of St. Mark at Alexandria* 
was long celebrated as being the depository 
of the Evangelist's body, of the translation 
of which to Venice a singular account is 
given by Sabellicus, one of the ancient 
Italian historians, in his Historia Venetice. 

" Of this church at Alexandria nothing remains. It is be- 
lieved to have occupied the site of the present lazaretto. 

158 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

It happened that at this period (c. 830) two 
Venetians, Bono de Malamocco and Rustico 
de Torcello, visiting the church, were struck 
with the grief exhibited by the attendant 
priests, and inquired into its cause. Learn- 
ing their apprehensions of the church being 
despoiled by the myrmidons of the Moslem, 
the strangers entreated from the priests' per- 
mission to remove the relics of the saint, not 
only promising them a large reward, but also 
the lasting gratitude of their fellow citizens, 
the Venetians. The clergy at Alexandria 
first met the request of Bono and Rustico 
with a decided negative; but when the sanc- 
tuary was actually invaded by the infidels, 
the defenceless guardians consented to yield 
up their sacred charge. The difficulty now 
was to convey the body on board one of the 
Venetian ships, of which there were several 
in the port of Alexandria, and at the same 
time to conceal the circumstance from the 
knowledge of the inhabitants, who held the 
remains of the Evangelist in high veneration, 
on account of the miracles which were per- 
formed through their agency. The body of 
St. Mark, being removed, was replaced by 
that of St. Claudian; but a miraculous per- 
fume which spread itself through the church 
159 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

when the holy relics were brought to light 
nearly betrayed the removal. In transport- 
ing the body through the city to the port, it 
became necessary to adopt some expedient 
which should prevent the curiosity, both of 
the infidels and the Christians, from being 
awakened. The body was accordingly de- 
posited in a large hamper, surrounded with 
vegetables and covered with pieces of pork, 
an article which every good Mussulman 
holds in abhorrence. 

Those who accompanied the hamper were 
ordered to cry Kanzir as they went, which 
in the Oriental tongue signifies pork. Hav- 
ing succeeded in reaching the vessels, the 
precious burden was suspended in the 
shrouds to prevent discovery, till the ship 
put to sea. Scarcely had the Venetians left 
Alexandria when an awful storm arose; and 
had not St. Mark himself appeared to Bono 
de Malamocco and advised him to furl his 
sails, the vessel must have been lost. On 
their arrival at Venice the whole city was 
transported with joy. The presence of the 
saint promised perpetual splendour to the 
republic. The body was received by the 
Senate with the same words with which his 
Master had saluted the saint in prison, 
160 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

" Peace be unto thee, Mark, My Evangel- 
ist! " Venice was filled with festivals, music 
and prayers, and the holy relics were con- 
ducted amidst hymns and incense to the 
Ducal Chapel. ' 

The Doge Giustiniano Participatio, dying 
a short time after this event, bequeathed a 
sum of money to build a church to the saint, 
which was accomplished under his brother 
and successor, Giovanni Participation 

In allusion to these translations of the 
saint's body, the hreve attached to the name 
of Giustiniano Participatio, in the hall of 
the great Council, exhibits the following in- 
scription: 

Corporis alta datur Mihi Sancti gratia Marci. 

This Ducal Chapel, projected by Giustini- 
ano, and carried out by Giovanni Partici- 
patio, which was built between the site of 
the existing Ducal Palace and the church of 
St. Theodore — hitherto the Ducal Chapel 
— was quite different from its present aspect 

^ According to local tradition, the remains of St. Mark, when 
first brought to Venice, were laid in a bronze sarcophagus 
embedded in an interior pilaster of the new church, with 
cognizance of no other individuals than the Doge Participatio 
and the Primicerius of the basilica. 

161 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

both in extent and plan, and in absence of 
rich decoration. It was originally of the 
simplest basilican form, with three eastern 
apses and no transepts, and in it were used 
marble columns and capitals which had been 
exported from Sicily by Giustiniano Par- 
ticipatio after his conquest there. The ruined 
cities of Heraclea, Attino, Concordia and 
others doubtless furnished materials, as exam- 
ples of all periods are found in St. Mark's. 

One very interesting relic of the old Ducal 
Palace still exists, viz., the lower part of one 
of its towers with walls eleven feet thick. 
This was converted into the treasury of St. 
Mark when the church was enlarged so as 
to include it in its plan at the west corner 
of the south transept. Recent discoveries 
have brought to light the external design of 
the early church, which was of plain red 
brick, undecorated by marbles or mosaics 
and only relieved by very simple blank ar- 
cading, with round arches not unlike those 
in some early Anglo-Norman buildings. 

In 976 this church was burnt, together 
with the rest of the palace, during an insur- 
rection against the Doge Candiano IV, and 
rebuilt on a larger scale by his successor 
Pietro Orseolo, but as he embraced a monas- 
162 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tic life within two years, it is hardly possible 
that he can have done more than restore the 
old church to its primitive form, and there is 
no record of a continuation of building in 
succeeding years. 

The nucleus of the present church has 
been ascertained from documents discovered 
in 1859 to belong to the period comprised 
between 1047 and 1071.^ Cuttaneo, who has 
traced the early history of the present cathe- 
dral and of its predecessors, accepts 1063 as 
the date of the actual commencement of the 
works. All the East, so far as it was acces- 
sible to the Venetian ships, was laid under 
contribution for columns and other architec- 
tural embellishments. 

Here the Greek architect came in, show- 
ing the Venetians how the simple basilican 
plan could be extended north and south by 
great transepts, and how, without increasing 
the length, an immense domed space could 
be obtained in the centre. Thus arose a 
building which was inspired throughout by 

^An inscription, now lost, recorded the completion of St. 
Mark's in 1071, but it was not consecrated till 1085, in the 
reign of Vitale Faliero (1084-1096), when it was dedicated " to 
God, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and to the protector St. 
Mark." 

163 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Byzantine work, and of which the main de- 
sign was certainly due to a Greek architect, 
and in all probability exercised no small in- 
fluence on the Lombard architecture of the 
twelfth and succeeding centuries.* 

The design of St. Mark's is often spoken 
of as founded on that of Sta. Sophia at Con- 
stantinople. This is erroneous. The Church 
of the Apostles in that city would seem to 
have furnished the model. 

That church, however, was demolished in 
1464, by Mohammed II to build a mosque 
on the site, so that the only data we have to 
go upon is the description given of it by 
Procopius, a historian who flourished in the 
reign of the Emperor Justinian. 

" In ancient times," says Procopius, " there 
was one church dedicated to the Apostles, but 
through length of time it had become ruin- 
ous, and seemed not likely to stand much 
longer. Justinian took this entirely down, 
and was careful, not only to rebuild it, but 
to render it more admirable both in size and 

* St. -Front at Perlgueux, built between 984 and 1047, was 
considered by M. Verneille to be the work of the architect of 
St. Mark's or a direct imitation of that church, and there was 
a Greek or Venetian colony at Limoges in the tenth and eleventh 
centuries. 

164 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

beauty. He carried out his intention in the 
following manner. Two lines were drawn 
in the form of a cross joining one another in 
the middle, the upright one pointing to the 
rising and setting sun, and the cross line to 
the north and south wind. These were sur- 
rounded by a circuit of walls, and within by 
columns, placed both above and below. 
About the middle point there is a place set 
apart, which may not be entered except by 
the priests, and which is consequently termed 
the Sanctuary. 

" The transepts which lie on each side of 
this, about the cross line, are of equal length, 
but that part of the upright line towards the 
setting sun is built so much longer than the 
other part as to form the figure of a cross. 

" That part of the roof which is above the 
sanctuary is constructed like the middle part 
of Sta. Sophia, except that it yields to it in 
size, for the four arches are suspended and 
connected with one another in the same 
fashion; the circular building standing 
above them is pierced with windows, and 
the splendid dome which over-arches it 
seems to be suspended in the air. In this 
manner the middle of the roof is built, but 
the roof over the four limbs of the church 
165 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

is constructed of the same size as that which 
I have described over the middle, w^ith this 
exceptioa, that the walls underneath the 
spherical part is not pierced with windows." 

This cruciform basilica of St. Mark's was 
enlarged by degrees. First of all (c. 1150- 
1200) the baptistery on the south, and the 
atrium which extends along the west and 
north sides of the nave, were added. Next, 
chapels were built north and south of the 
transepts. That of St. Isidore on the north 
dates from 1354, and was due to the Doge 
Andrea Dandolo. 

In the fifteenth century a sacristy at the 
east end was added, the altar of St. Peter 
in the northern apse being removed to make 
a passage to it. Another way to the sacristy 
for the use of the clergy was cut through the 
massive wall of the main apse; but with 
these exceptions St. Mark's has come down 
to our own day marvellously little injured; 
by Renaissance accretions. In fact, during] 
the long period from its dedication in 1081 
till the overthrow of the Venetian Republii 
by Napoleon, every Doge's reign saw some' 
additions to the rich decoration of the church 
in mosaic, sculpture, wall-lining or columns 
of precious marbles. 

166 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

By degrees the whole walls, inside and 
outside, were completely faced, either with 
glass mosaics on gold grounds, or with 
precious marbles and porphyries, plain 
white marble being used only for sculpture 
and then thickly covered with gold. 

Speaking roughly, the plan of St. Mark's 
is a group of five square spaces covered each 
by its pendentive dome. The peculiarity of 
the structure lies in its breadth of wagon 
vaults which support and separate these 
domes, which is so great that the vast piers 
which sustain them are pierced in two 
stories, and divide each other into four piers 
with a vaulted space between them. Each 
dome is consequently the centre of a cruci- 
form space, the wings of which have wagon 
vaults. The only exception is the east end, 
where an apse is substituted for this space, 
and out of this apse spring three minor ones, 
as at Sta. Sophia. 

Each dome is about hemispherical above 
its pendentive and is pierced with windows, 
as in the Constantinopolitan example. The 
domes are now, and have been for many 
ages, covered over by rather tall domical 
towers of timber, each surmounted by a sort 
of turret on its apex. The wings which 
167 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

flanked each domed space, bounded as they 
were by the perforated piers, were so sug- 
gestive of side aisles that the builders, 
familiar no doubt with aisled churches, 
added arcades from pier to pier both in nave 
and transepts. These, however, are merely 
decorative, supporting no galleries, as is fre- 
quent in the east, and only serving as narrow 
communications, equivalent to triforium 
passages, between the upper chambers in the 
great piers. 

At Sta. Sophia, which, since the loss of 
the Apostles' Church at Constantinople, we 
must take as our model for St. Mark's, we 
find a building domed throughout, but there 
is no attempt here to make the dome an ex- 
ternal feature of the building. The adoption 
of curved lines throughout both plan and 
elevation invests Sta. Sophia with a com- 
pleteness of effect as a domed structure 
which cannot be claimed for buildings 
which adopt a dome as they might any otherj 
form of roof for covering a part only of th( 
interior. At Sta. Sophia there is no sort oi 
incongruity — no square or rectangular navel 
or transepts roofed over by curved forms. 
Curvature is of the essence of the plan, and 
we see at once that a domical completion is 
168 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the most obvious and natural method to be 
adopted. The eye passes with pleasure from 
the walls to the roof. Niche-like recesses 
lead to semi-domes, and these carry the in- 
terest upwards till it culminates in the great 
central cupola, the whole forming one of the 
most beautiful works of domical architec- 
ture in the world. 

At St. Mark's the domes are more numer- 
ous, though hardly so successful; indeed, in 
comparison with their gorgeous mosaic cov- 
ering, their architecture is but little thought 
of. In this respect the contrast with Sta. 
Sophia is very great, for in the latter case 
the mosaics have been obscured by its Mo- 
hammedan possessors. Had such a barbar- 
ism been committed in St. Mark's, there 
would be found little in it to command our 
admiration. The congruity between plan 
and section, of which Sta. Sophia is so stri- 
king an example, is here wanting, while the 
minor domes act rather as foils to the cen- 
tral cupola than accessories leading up to 
and enhancing the efifect of the chief feature 
of the design. 

It is worthy of remark, however, that at 
Venice we find an essential difference of 
external treatment. Hitherto the dome had 
169 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

been the actual crown of the building. The 
interior surface formed the ceiling of the 
church, while the exterior was a visible roof 
to resist the weather. At St. Mark's the 
domes have become mere ceilings con- 
structed at a lower level than the exterior 
leads us to expect, and covered with lofty 
roofs having no relation to the forms beneath 
them. This was the method of the Gothic 
architects of Northern Europe, though they 
did not adopt the fantastic shapes we see at 
Venice. The groining in English Gothic 
cathedrals is not the roof, in the sense that 
the dome of the Pantheon at Rome is the 
roof of that building. Such groining re- 
quires to be protected by an outer roof of 
woodwork covered with lead or other 
weather-resisting material. 

Reference to a sectional view of St. 
Mark's in the Chiese Principale di Eu- 
ropa will afiford an excellent idea of the 
domical construction of the Venetian Cathe- 
dral. 

Externally St. Mark's affords a striking 
example of how little of success in effect is 
dependent upon scale alone in monumental 
architecture; for we see here a nobly real 
ized character of grandeur, power and so- 
170 






The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

lemnity, whilst its proportions are far from 
such as to entitle the building to rank among 
churches extraordinary for size in Italy or 
Europe. Its length from the chief portal 
to the altar of the Holy Sacrament is 220 
feet; the width of the fagade is 152 feet; 
the height without the pinnacles is 65 feet, 
and the breadth at the transepts 180 feet. 

The fagade opens upon the Piazza San 
Marco in a series of deep, round-arched 
recesses, with vaults resting upon a forest of 
slender columns, their shafts of many-hued 
marbles in two orders. Above, forming the 
highest story, is a corresponding series of 
round-arched gables crowned by delicate 
finials and pinnacles with canopied niches, 
and a later addition of Gothic character that 
supplies a graceful sky-line to this resplen- 
dent front all radiant with coloured marbles, 
gilding and fields of mosaic. 

Along the entire middle extends an atrium, 
into which has been incorporated the richly 
decorated baptistery with mosaic-encrusted 
vault, perhaps the earliest instance of the 
edifice appropriated to such sacramental 
purposes not apart or separated from the 
church it pertains to, as were all Italian bap- 
tisteries during the first nine centuries; and 
171 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

it is probable that modifications in the ad- 
ministration of the rites had been the prox- 
imate cause of such changes. 

The marbles and chiselled details of St. 
Mark's are believed to be, in great part, 
from the ruins of certain cities of Asia 
Minor and Sicily, and such use of fragments, 
from some of these cities at least, is attested 
in the fact that a species of well-formed 
brick, much employed in medieval Venice, 
were called by masons " antinelle," from Al- 
tinum, one of the abandoned cities. 

Both the inner and outer bronze portals 
are among the earliest extant specimens of 
Italian and Greek metallurgy, inlaid with 
figures of saints in different metals, two hav- 
ing Latin and one a Greek inscription; the 
portal so distinguished as Byzantine being 
that said to have been taken from Sta. So- 
phia in the sack of Constantinople by the 
Crusaders in 1204. 

From so early as the period of Charle- 
magne it had been ordered that in all the 
provinces and chief cities of Italy " auri- 
fices " and " argentarii " should be estab- 
lished; and the practice of the goldsmith^s 
art at Venice in the twelfth century is at- 
tested by two documents of 11 23 and 1190, 
172 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

including objects of its produce among items 
bequeathed by last wills. 

The Venetian sculpture of this remote 
medieval period is exemplified in the monu- 
ments, now in the atrium of St. Mark's, to 
the Doge Vitale Faliero (1096), to the 
Dogaressa Felicita Michel (11 11), and to 
the Doge Maria Morosini (1253), the latter 
adorned with rude reliefs of the Saviour 
amidst the twelve apostles and the Virgin 
Mary amidst twelve angels all holding cen- 
sers. 

In the richly carved capitals every style 
from the fourth to the twelfth century is rep- 
resented, many of them being marvels of 
delicacy combined with a rare spirit of exe- 
cution. Some of the larger capitals are par- 
tially covered with a rich basket-work com- 
pletely undercut with great technical skill; 
others have vine or acanthus foliage treated 
with vigorous realism; and a large number 
have either the revived Byzantine treatment 
of the Classic Corinthian, or Ionic capitals 
with variations, evincing the utmost power 
of invention and originality. 

In addition to the elaborate sculpture, 
some of the capitals are decorated with in- 
laid patterns; and many of the mouldings, 
173 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

such as the capping of the triforium screen, 
are also ornamented in the same way. This 
use of inlay is almost peculiar to St. Mark's, 
as is also the method of encircling sculptural 
reliefs with backgrounds of brilliant gold 
and coloured glass mosaics, producing an 
effect of extraordinary richness. 

Pre-eminent in the wealth of pictorial and 
gorgeous decoration, St. Mark's inspires, at 
first sight, like an enchanted fabric which 
imagination might regard as being raised by 
the wand of a magician from the tributary 
sea. 

" Being come into the church," says Eve- 
lyn, " you see nothing, and tread on nothing, 
but what is precious." Or, as the author of 
Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages more 
scientifically put it two hundred years later: 
" The colour is so magnificent that one 
troubles oneself but little about the architec- 
ture and thinks only upon the expanse of 
gold and deep rich colour, all harmonized 
together into one glorious whole, so that all 
architectural lines of moulding and the like 
are entirely lost, and nothing but a soft, 
swelling and undulating sea of colour is per- 
ceived." 

In truth the interior of St. Mark's resem- 
174 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

bles a casket of jewels, comprising every 
species of workmanship among its gorgeous 
contents. 

No European cathedral can compare with 
that of Venice. The effect is surprising and 
even magical. The first impression con- 
veyed is that of a cavern of gold encrusted 
with precious stones which are at once splen- 
did and sombre, sparkling and mysterious. 
Cupolas, vaults, architraves and walls are 
carved with little cubes of gilt capitals, of 
unique form, among which the rays of light 
sparkle like the scales of a fish. Where the 
gold ground terminates at the height of the 
columns, commences a clothing of the most 
precious varied marbles, porphyries and ala- 
baster, relieved by pure white marble, sculp- 
tured in panels, string-courses and the like. 
The various marbles are arranged in broad 
upright bands, alternating so that one colour 
enhances the effect of the one next to it. 

For example, the nave wall in the north 
aisle is faced thus, (i) Verde antico, (2) 
Proconnesian, (3) red broccatello of Ve- 
rona, (4) Proconnesian, (5) magnificent 
Oriental alabaster, (6) Proconnesian, (7) 
verde antico; below these is a narrow band 
of red Verona marble, and then a plinth 
175 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

moulding of white Athenian marble, which 
rests on the seat of panelled red marble that 
runs all round the interior of the nave and 
transepts. The large columns between the 
brick piers, six in the nave and eight in the 
transepts, are monoliths of fine Proconne- 
sian marble, veined with greyish blue and 
amber, and the great brick piers are faced 
with thin slabs of the same material. This 
facing, and most of that throughout the 
church, are made of ancient columns sawn 
into slices. 

No less than five hundred columns of por- 
phyry and costly marbles are used to dec- 
orate the church, especially on the west 
front. Some of those inside the atrium have 
no constructional use, but are only set against 
the wall for the sake of their beauty and 
value. 

" On entering the basilica, the first impres- 
sion received of its mosaic decoration is sim- 
ilar to that made upon us when we turn at 
random over the pages of a New Testament 
without stopping to read any particular part. 
Christ meets the eye in every place. Not 
such a Christ, however, as is commonly ex- 
hibited throughout Italy — either a helpless 
babe in His Mother's arms, or a dead man 
176 



VENICE 

Interior of 5t. Mark's, looking East 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

on a cross, but the God Man, Christ Jesus, 
in the plenitude of His power, ' in whom 
dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead 
bodily.' 

" The words of Ruskin are almost liter- 
ally true : * Every dome and hollow of its 
roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost 
height of it, raised in power, or coming in 
Judgement.' The same gloriously majestic 
figure dominates the building from apse 
to pilaster, from pillared porch and broad 
expanse of wall. Christ; Christ conquers; 
Christ reigns; Christ rules; is proclaimed 
in the cupolas, and echoes round the 
vaults and galleries of the whole structure. 
We are reminded of the manner in which 
the Evangelist, omitting all mention of our 
Lord's birth and infancy, plunges in 
medias res in accordance with his intention 
to set forth in his Gospel Christ as ' the 
Lion of the Tribe of Judah,' and in ob- 
servance of the limits laid down by St. 
Peter as to the extent of the apostolic testi- 
mony which was to be ' from the baptism 
of John, unto the same day that He was 
taken up from us.' 

" In short, what strikes the beholder on 
contemplating the St. Mark's mosaics is 
177 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the absolute supremacy and sovereignty 
accorded to our Lord. Thus on entering 
the chapel of St. Isodore ^ it is not the form 
of the martyr that first catches the eye, 
but that of our Lord enthroned on the east 
wall above the altar." ^ 

The iconography of St. Mark's is briefly 
thus: On the vault over the western gal- 
lery is a subject from the Book of Revela- 
tion. 

In the nave dome is the Descent of the 
Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. 

Tongues of fire radiate upon colossal 
figures of apostles, and below them on the 
drum of the dome is a second series of 
figures representing various nations of the 
world who were converted by the inspired 
teaching of the apostles. 

From the unfenestrated marble walls of 
the dim north and south aisles of the nave 
ten stately figures framed in gold gleam 
forth, five on either hand. The central 
figure on the north side is that of a youth- 
ful Christ, with cruciferous nimbus, and in 

* So called from its enshrining the body of that saint, the 
martyr of Chios, who was killed by the Emperor Decius in 250, 
and which was brought from that island (the reputed birth- 
place of Homer) in 1125 by the Doge Domenico Michiel. 

* Robertson. 

178 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

a robe of gold against a star-spangled blue 
ground. On either hand are the prophets, 
Hosea, Joel, Micah and Jeremiah, hold- 
ing scrolls on which are inscribed the fol- 
lowing sentences foretelling the Incarna- 
tion of our Lord: 

Hosea. " Quasi diluculum praeparatus 
est, egressus ejus, et venit quasi imber nobis 
temporaneus et serotinus terrae " (Hosea vi, 

3)- 

Joel. " Similis ei non fuit a principio, 
et post eum non erit, usque in annos gene- 
rationis et generationis " (Joel ii, 2). 

Micah. " Ecce Dominus egredietur de 
loco suo, et descendit et calcabit super 
excelsa terrae" (Micah i, 3). 

Jeremiah. " Post haec in terris visus est, 
et cum hominibus conversatus est" (Ba- 
ruch iii, 38). 

The central figure of the five on the wall 
of the south aisle is that of the Blessed 
Virgin standing between Isaiah and Da- 
vid, Solomon and Ezekiel, each of whom 
bears a scroll, with the following appro- 
priate legends: 

Isaiah. " Ecce Virgo concipiet et pariet 
filium, et vocabitur Emanuel" (Isaiah 
viii, 14). 

179 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

David. " De f ructu ventris tui ponam 
super sedem meam " (Ps. cxxxii, ii). 

Solomon. " Quae est quae ascendit quasi 
aurora consurgens " (Cant, vi, lo). 

Ezekiel. " Porta haec, quam vides, 
clausa erit et non aperietur " (Ezekiel 
xliv, 2). 

The great dome above the crossing rep- 
resents the Ascension, with bands of large 
figures of the Apostles and below them the 
Virtues. 

The choir dome has a grand half-figure 
of our Lord and a series of prophets. The 
half-dome across the high altar bears, of 
course, the Majesty. 

The transept domes have various saints 
and doctors of the Church, all with ex- 
planatory descriptions. The whole of the 
rest of the walls and vaults are covered 
with mosaic pictures, of which a mere 
catalogue would occupy many pages. 

In the atrium, which extends along the 
western and northern sides of the nave, the 
mosaics represent the history of the world 
from the Creation to the Deliverance of 
the Children of Israel. 

In the baptistery, which corresponds to 
the atrium in the north, are the life of St. 
180 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

John the Baptist and scenes from the life 
of Christ. On the first dome (westwards) 
is the Majesty over a series of baptismal 
scenes and Greek doctors; on the second 
dome is Christ adored by angels. 

In the barrel-vault of St. Isidore's 
Chapel, which lies along the north wall 
of the north transept, is a very fine series 
of mosaics representing passages from the 
life of that saint and other subjects exe- 
cuted about the middle of the fourteenth 
century, soon after the completion of the 
chapel. 

To the succeeding century may be as- 
signed the decoration of the sacristy, while 
in other parts are mosaics of a still later 
date, some from cartoons by Tintoretto and 
other Venetian painters of the decadence. 

These are not designed with any real 
sense of the special necessities of mosaic 
work, and are all very inferior in decora- 
tive effect to the simple Byzantine style of 
those executed between the twelfth and 
fourteenth centuries. 

In subject many of the early mosaics in 
St. Mark's are scarcely intelligible with- 
out a key. Those of the history of the 
Virgin in a chapel off the north transept 
181 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

by Michele Giambane, 1430, are among 
the finest. 

Most of them have been subjected to 
centuries of restoration. In the style of 
the most antique are analogies with the 
Sicilian mosaic school; and good judges 
conclude that many are of the eleventh 
century by artists whose education had 
probably been Byzantine, whatever their 
birth. Occupying as they do the entire 
golden field of vaults and cupolas, seen in 
the dim religious light that alone pervades 
this shadowy interior, their effect is solem- 
nizing beyond description, and technical de- 
ficiencies are forgotten in the grandeur of 
the whole. 

To this real and essential decoration the 
architecture of St. Mark's is entirely sub- 
ordinate. Though incontestably of the 
primitive ages of art, when the means of 
expression were yet imperfect, these mo- 
saics have more than those decorative qual- 
ities of colour and design which are often 
found in semi-barbarous work. They have 
a special beauty of their own which is 
matchless; they are as unique as the in- 
comparable capitals of the arcades of the 
Doge's Palace. 

182 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Absolutely unique in variety, wealth and 
preciousness, the decoration of St. Mark's 
embodies and expresses the religion and 
throws light on the policy of a great com- 
monwealth that, throughout long centuries, 
held the first place intellectually and com- 
mercially amongst the nations of the world. 
There is a theory that the undulating pave- 
ment of St. Mark's was intended as a sym- 
bol of the sea waves, but waves were by 
no means characteristic of the lagoons. 

In numerous places the pavement tiles 
had been cracked, and some of the pieces 
were missing. These fractures and other 
irregularities must have proceeded from 
the sinking of the foundations, which 
were largely composed of beams of wood 
driven hundreds of years ago into the shal- 
lows and mud over which the city is built.* 
The spaces between the inlets now covered 
over with streets and squares, palaces and 
churches, were undoubtedly first filled 

^ The tide ebbs and flows under the floor of St. Mark's, so 
that a boat might come up under the great dome if a canal were 
cut from the lagoon; and the undulating floor, which some 
people regard as a beautiful feature of the design, is only the 
evidence and the consequence of the upward thrust of the piers 
of the old church underneath, which prevents certain parts 
of the pavement sinking as fast as the rest. 

183 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

with artificial foundations placed on count- 
less thousands of piles. Such is the sub- 
structure of the railway which now carries 
the traveller into Venice, stretching for 
more than three miles across the lagoons. 
In confirmation of this it should be men- 
tioned that the pavement of other Vene- 
tian churches are as far from being even 
as that of St. Mark's. 

The choir, which is raised about four 
feet above the nave, is separated from it 
by a marble rood-screen formed of ancient 
columns bearing a straight architrave sur- 
mounted by fourteen statues, viz., of St. 
Mark, the Blessed Virgin and the twelve 
Apostles. 

This screen, which constitutes one of the 
most remarkable architectural features of 
the interior and extends across the aisles, 
forming a north apsidal chapel of St. 
Peter and a southern one of St. Clement, 
is signed as the work of the Venetians 
Jacobello and Pietro Paolo, sons of An- 
tonio delle Masegna, 1394- 1397. The rood 
itself, signed "Jacobus Magistri Marci 
Benato de Venatico," is singular from the 
loading of the cross with other figures be- 
sides the Divine sufferer — St. Mark, the 
184 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

four Evangelists and the four Latin doc- 
tors. 

But the silver workmanship of this cru- 
cifix and of the seven figures on either side 
of it is of no high excellence. It may be 
observed, in the prominence of this rood- 
loft, impeding to a great degree the view 
of the high altar and the choir, a proof by 
inference that nothing like the Benedic- 
tion rite of more modern origin could have 
been contemplated among the special ap- 
propriations of that altar by those who 
built the church before us. 

The rood-screen or jube, such as one 
knows it in England, Belgium and North- 
ern Germany, and which until the vicious 
era of Louis Quinze formed so magnificent 
a feature in the interior of almost every 
great French church, is a rara avis in Italy. 
Doubtless the Italian churches of cathedral 
and conventual rank possessed rood-screens 
from the fact that they exist, at Torcello, 
at St. Mark's and the Frari at Venice, in 
the Cathedral and Church of St. Fermo at 
Verona, and in the early Renaissance 
church of St. Maurizio at Milan — an 
interesting and valuable example of a very 
high close screen reaching almost to the roof. 
185 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

It appears to me, from the numerous 
cathedrals and churches which I inspected 
last summer, from Venice and Ravenna in 
the north-east to Milan and Vercelli in the 
north-west, that subsequently to the Renais- 
sance of the classical, when so many medi- 
eval church choirs were either rebuilt or 
remodelled, a compromise was effected by 
joining the high altar to the wall on either 
side by wings, pierced with doorways, after 
the fashion of the so-called St. Cuthbert's 
screen in St. Alban^s Cathedral, England. 

In front of the rood at St. Mark's stand 
two very large ambons or pulpits, one of 
porphyry, the other verde anttco. 

In the northern ambon is a lofty patri- 
arch's throne under a metal domed canopy, 
curiously like a pulpit in a Moslem 
mosque. 

Within the screen several rows of open 
benches are arranged, where the service — 
the daily Chapter or Canons' Mass — 
might be heard quietly but for the con- 
stant ingress and egress of commonplace 
Baedeker-bearing tourists, whose peculiar 
mode of comporting themselves as if they 
were feudal lords coming in amongst su- 
perstitious serfs must impose a great strain 
186 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

upon the courtesy of the clergy and the 
forbearance of others who, like myself, 
were present to worship and not to stare 
about. 

The music was solemn and devotional, 
and except that the vestments worn by the 
celebrant and his assistant ministers were 
of the customary board-like modern Ital- 
ian shape, the ceremonial at St. Mark's 
on this morning of my visit left nothing 
to be desired. 

I may here take the opportunity of re- 
minding the reader that this most cele- 
brated and beautiful of sanctuaries on the 
Adriatic shores was originally built as sim- 
ply a ducal chapel contiguous to the sov- 
ereign magistrate's residence; and that it 
was not until 1807 that it became the Ca- 
thedral of Venice through the transfer of 
the patriarchal chair from St. Pietro di 
Castello, the episcopal church of earlier 
origin, but quite jejune ecclesiologically 
with the exception of a fine mid-fifteenth- 
century campanile. 

The ciborium of the high altar, a work 

of the eleventh century, is supported on 

marble columns, encrusted with high relief 

groups of minute subjects from Old and 

187 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

New Testament history, with explanatory 
Latin epigraphs on bands that encircle 
their shafts at intervals. 

These sculptures are more curious than 
beautiful; they are Greek in style, and are 
supposed by Cicognara to have been exe- 
cuted at Constantinople by order from 
Venice about the close of the tenth or in 
the course of the next century. Under the 
mensa of this altar, which was renewed in 
porphyry and rich marbles in 1834, ^^^ 
relics of St. Mark, discovered after ages 
of oblivion in 181 1, were re-enshrined with 
great solemnity on August 26, 1835. 

The eastern crypt, or confessio, extends 
under the whole of the choir behind the 
rood-screen, and has three apses like the 
upper church. The body of St. Mark was 
originally placed here, but is now within the 
high altar of the upper church. Below 
the nave is an older crypt, the existence 
of which was only discovered towards the 
latter part of the last century; it is not 
accessible, having been filled in with earth 
and rubbish at a very early period. 

The still richly endowed, though often 
despoiled, treasury of St. Mark's contains 
three relics, each as revered as it is precious. 
188 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

One of these is the original autograph 
of St. Mark's Gospel, set in a case, on one 
of whose sides is a medieval relief in gold 
of the Delivery of the Keys to St. Peter. 
It consists, however, of nothing more than 
two pages of papyrus, now torn into frag- 
ments, in which, when permitted to in- 
spect, I found it just possible to distinguish 
Greek letters, but neither verse nor sen- 
tence recognizable as by that Evangelist. 

For the marble chair which is said to be 
the identical episcopal throne of St. Mark, 
no higher date than the tenth or eleventh 
century can be claimed. It is traditionally 
believed to have found its way thither 
after being presented by the Emperor Her- 
aclius to the Patriarch of Grado; but the 
character of the reliefs adorning it — the 
Evangelistic emblems, each six-winged; 
the Lamb on the mystic mount, with the 
four rivers; SS. Peter and Paul; and the 
Cross between candelabra — indicate a 
much later period. 

But perhaps the greatest treasure of St. 
Mark's is the superb altar pallium (Palla 
d' Oro) only to be seen upon the high 
altar on certain great days. Executed at 
Constantinople by order of the Doge Pie- 
189 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tro Orseolo in 976, or at least begun in that 
year, but not brought to Venice (as sup- 
posed) till 1 102, it stands before us, a work 
added to and embellished by order of suc- 
cessive Doges in 1105, 1209 and 1345. It 
is eleven feet long by seven feet broad, the 
lower portion being twice the breadth of 
the upper, and is wrought in laminas of 
gold, encrusted with groups and figures in 
low relief, the general design of the upper 
part being a central quatrefoil between six 
round arches on pillarets, and of the lower 
part a circle surrounded by four small cir- 
cles within a square, with, on either side, 
three tiers of six arcades bearing figures. 
It contains about 3olb. weight of gold, 
nearly ten times that weight in silver, and 
is set with over 2000 pearls and precious 
stones. Unfortunately the latter have no 
great value, the originals having fallen a 
prey to the invader at the fall of the Re- 
public, the Falla itself only escaping the 
melting pot because its value was not 
known. It is not unlikely that this pre- 
cious shrine destined for the Evangelist's 
relics, divided as it is into panels made to 
fold horizontally, was to have been placed 
above the mensa of the high altar, but not 

I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

intended to be used, as it now occasionally 
is, for encasing the sides. A lengthy in- 
spection of this Palla d' Oro enabled me 
to recognize in it the strongly marked 
characteristics of the Byzantine school in 
all its rigid mannerism, studied asceticism 
and overloading of gorgeous ornaments. 
On the central panel of the front is rep- 
resented our Lord enthroned and in act of 
blessing. His countenance is of the Greek 
type, dark, sullen and severe; in His left 
hand the Gospels gorgeously bound and 
set with twenty-four gems; the nimbus 
and the supporters of the throne are like- 
wise profusely jewelled. On either side 
are the Evangelists, each seated at a desk, 
each nimbus defined in pearls; and below 
the throne is St. Mary in attitude of 
prayer, the arms outspread, and supported 
on either side by the Doge Giustiniano 
Participazio and a regal lady, probably 
the Empress Irene. The other larger fig- 
ures are: the twelve Apostles, prophets 
and saints of the Old Law, and white- 
robed angels in adoration. 

Among the smaller compositions are 
scenes from the life of St. Mark and the 
translation of his relics. Including their 
191 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

arrival and pompous reception at Venice. 
A cornice presents us with a series of min- 
iature designs hardly distinguishable ex- 
cept in the central subject, the Virgin and 
Child. The form of the Divine Infant is 
entirely covered v^ith jev^els. Then there 
are several bust-reliefs, their interstices 
filled with graceful flowery borders, show- 
ing how eminent was the skill of the By- 
zantine artist in this, whilst his school stood 
so low in other departments. The effem- 
inate Greek treatment of the figures and 
costumes of Old Testament personages is 
curiously marked; and it may be worth 
while to consider the immeasurable dis- 
tance of idea between the Moses, here no- 
ticeable for a certain girlish prettiness, and 
the colossal statue of the Lawgiver by 
Michael Angelo at Rome. 

Poetic and wondrously effective as is the 
whole of St. Mark's, its claims as a Chris- 
tian type in architecture are open to ques- 
tion. It resembles a casket of jewels com- 
prising every species of workmanship 
among its gorgeous contents; its over- 
loaded details divert from what is essential 
in the sacred edifice, the spiritual intent 
and heavenly dedication. Many of the 
192 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

antique ornaments set in its outer walls are 
indeed quite foreign to the religious char- 
acter, and, like the necklace on the classic 
idol, serve but to deck the form, not en- 
hance the beauty of the art-work; and 
even the celebrated horses of gilt brass, 
brought from the Hippodrome at Con- 
stantinople among the spoils apportioned 
to the Venetians on the taking of that city 
by the Crusaders, are quite unsuitable, 
however imposing in their conspicuous 
place over the central portals. 

Of all the numberless details that trench 
upon the attention, the statues, the columns, 
the mosaics, the rare marbles which line 
the walls or cover the domes and pave- 
ments, there is hardly one that has not its 
value and significance, either in itself or 
in its past history. Such a church cannot 
be conquered without time. It must be 
visited again and again, and slowly and 
patiently studied. 

As I dreamt there under almost every 
condition of light, how many shadows from 
the past arose and filled this " dim and 
mighty minster of old time " with their 
historic forms! I thought of the stern cru- 
saders swearing on the banner of the cross 
193 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

before setting out for the Holy Land; of 
the bronzed warriors who bore the stand- 
ard of the old Queen of the Adriatic far 
through the glowing East, and who brought 
their spoils and riches to lay them at the 
feet of their patron and protector; of the 
mighty Doges, whose names recall all that 
Venice was in the plenitude of her power, 
and whose blazoned shields once hung on 
the marble walls; I pictured them slowly 
pacing these shadowy vistas in their robes 
of state; of ambassadors from distant lands, 
and Popes, in the plenitude of their pomp 
and power, bending in homage at the 
shrine of the Republic's chosen saint. 

I thought of those nameless multitudes 
whom history calls " the people " ; that 
people whose love for St. Mark's was based 
on and inspired by a love for their country 
and its greatness; a people who loved free- 
dom as their own sea waves, and who saw 
in the old basilica not merely the expres- 
sion of a religious creed, but the palladium 
of their cherished liberty, the inviolable 
temple of their God, and the Holy Ark of 
their own beloved State. 



194 



CHAPTER VI 

FERRARA AND BOLOGNA 

The western fagade of the Cathedral at 
Ferrara, the glory of the old States of the 
Church, and the fittest save one in Italy — 
that of St. Lorenzo at Genoa — to rival 
the front of a French church, is to the 
Italian what the west front of Rheims is 
to a Frenchman, or that of Wells to an 
Englishman. 

Entirely different in outline from the 
generally adopted simple one with its 
broad low gable, its western doors, its but- 
tresses in the form of attached shafts some- 
time supporting nothing, and its rose win- 
dow surrounded by the symbols of the 
Evangelists, this fagade of the Duomo at 
Ferrara, which might vie even with that 
of a northern church in beauty, intricacy 
and richness of character, is nevertheless 
an entirely shamelessly false one, which 
the less ornate ones are honourably not. 
195 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Dating from the middle of the twelfth 
century, and built of pale yellow marble, 
to which, in certain parts, a rose-coloured 
one lends an additional charm, it is 
divided into three nearly equal compart- 
ments. Each of these divisions, which are 
gabled, rises in four stages, wherein it is 
interesting to trace the gradual growth of 
Gothic purity and richness as they ascend. 
The central compartment is occupied by 
a slightly projecting porch, whose inner 
doorway of the richest and most exuberant 
late Romanesque architecture bears in its 
lintel eight sculptured scenes from the life 
of the Virgin, and its tympanum a " St. 
George and the Dragon." Over this porch 
the genius of Niccola Pisano raised a pro- 
naos, which in its early thirteenth-century ; 
Gothic purity is probably without a rival 
in these Northern parts of Italy. In the 
central arcade the subdividing shaft gives 
place to the same artist's world-famed 
statue of the Madonna, on either side of 
which a lamp is kept burning with solemn 
effect all through the night. The whole of 
the pronaos above these graceful open ar- 
cades with the varied mouldings and "5 
boldly foliaged capitals of their shafts, 
196 



FERRARA 
Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and the quatrefoils pierced plate tracery- 
wise in their tympana, is occupied by a 
representation of the Last Judgement, 
spread, however, in too unsystematic a 
manner to bear comparison either with 
the French examples or with the sculpture 
on the west front of Orvieto Cathedral, 
which is not only beautiful in its position, 
but beautiful also to a high degree in all 
its detail of design and execution. At 
Ferrara the gable of the pronaos is occu- 
pied by the Majesty seated within a vesica 
and supported on either side by two saints, 
while following the line of the gable is a 
guipure band of sculpture, which on ex- 
amination will be found to consist of a 
number of half figures, dominated at the 
apex of the gable by two angels who hold 
a crown over the seated figure of our Lord. 
In the frieze below, the blessed are seen 
being conducted into the presence of the 
Father, and the accursed into the place of 
torment, which is here represented with 
all that hideous and terrible realism which 
the medieval sculptors knew so well how 
to depict. I believe I am right in assert- 
ing that there are no representations of the 
Resurrection and Last Judgement together 
197 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of earlier date than the year looo. The 
explanation appears to be that prior to that 
year there was a deep and widespread 
feeling in the minds of people that the 
end of the world would come in looo; but 
when the period passed without its having 
come, a revulsion of feeling ensued. To 
correct this the clergy dwelt strongly and 
frequently on the certainty of the last judge- 
ment in their sermons, and caused archi- 
tects and artists, especially during the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to place 
representations in the most conspicuous 
situations in churches. 

Of Italian Gothic sculpture, which 
would admit of much praise of the high- 
est kind, the greatest school is that of the 
Pisani. Besides the exquisite piece of work 
over the porch at Ferrara we owe to them 
the unsurpassed sculpture of the front of 
Orvieto Cathedral, as we do also the fine 
pulpits of Siena, Pisa and St. Andrea at 
Pistoja, the idea of which, it is only fair 
to say, was not theirs, but derived from a 
certain Guido de Como, who in A. D. 1250 
executed a fine sculptured pulpit in the 
church of St. Bartolommeo at Pistoja. 
But whilst none, or at any rate very little, 
198 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of this figure sculpture, either in execution 
or in the elaborate telling of its story, sur- 
passes the best thirteenth-century French 
work, it is remarkable that the sculpture 
of foliage is comparatively rare, and sel- 
dom good or at all architectural in char- 
acter when it does occur. 

The cause of this would open up a very 
interesting investigation. Perhaps it was 
the continued recollection of the antique, 
which in our own time has produced the 
same results, which hampered the Italian 
artists; but however it is, we see nothing 
in the purely Gothic sculpture of Italy at 
all worthy of comparison with the exqui- 
site works of the Byzantine artists in St. 
Mark's, Venice, and at Torcello, or with 
the contemporaneous work of the North- 
ern sculptors, who in Paris, Chartres, 
Bourges, Rouen, Nuremburg, Bamberg, 
Freiburg in Saxony, Lincoln and Wells, 
were devising for us such perfect embodi- 
ments of the best architectural sculpture, 
founded properly on nature, as it would 
seem impossible ever to excel. 

In Italy sculpture of figures was intro- 
duced in a much less general way than 
might have been expected. There are no 
199 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

examples of anything like the great French 
portals covered with a profusion of sculp- 
ture on a grand scale. Here it is often 
introduced in a succession of very small 
medallions scattered about the fagade, as, 
for example, in that at Modena, but the 
delicacy and tenderness of sentiment ex- 
hibited in such v^orks as this, and in the 
doorways of the Baptistery at Parma, only 
make us regret that this species of orna- 
mentation was not made use of on a more 
impressive scale by the Italian architects. 
Quitting Venice in the afternoon, dark- 
ness had fallen ere I drove into Ferrara 
through the pleasantly umbrageous road 
which lies between the railway station and 
the somewhat melancholy old archiepis- 
copal city, so that when quarters had been 
secured at the Albergo della Stella d' Oro, 
fronting the great frowning red-brick mass 
of the Castle with its dreadful memories 
of that tragedy immortalized by Lord 
Byron in his Parisina, the Cathedral was 
closed. I had, therefore, to content myself 
with a survey of its fagade, which, loom- 
ing large against the deep blue star- 
spangled heavens, with the lamp burning 
on either side of Pisano's exquisite Ma- 
200 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

donna in the pronaos, left an extraordinary 
impression upon me, and I retired to rest 
with delightful anticipations of what the 
interior would reveal on the morrow. 

Whispers had reached me that it had 
been " modernized," a term which may 
mean anything; but my consternation may 
be imagined when, on drawing aside the 
curtain which veils the entrance to the 
nave from the narthex, I found myself in 
a building, spacious and of its kind impo- 
sing, but from which, with the exception of 
its font, every trace of medievalism has 
been ruthlessly banished/ 

During a subsequent ramble about the 
deserted streets and grass-grown squares in 
remote parts of the city, I lighted upon an 
engraving of the interior of the Duomo, 
made before the work of spoliation, which 
extended over the century comprised be- 
tween 1637 and 1737, had been com- 
menced. 

The view in question was an internal 
elevation of the greater part of the south 
side, and from it I could gather that, like 
most of the early Italian Gothic churches 

^ It was such structures as these that so justly excited the 
indignation of Pugin. 

201 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of its age — the middle of the twelfth cen- 
tury — Ferrara Cathedral had its several 
great vaulting bays subdivided into two 
lesser ones supporting a triforium, com- 
prising two triple arcades under semicir- 
cular arches, and a clerestory curiously 
lighted by two tiers of very small round- 
headed windows. There would also ap- 
pear to have been one of those complex 
multifoiled wood roofs which we still see 
at Verona in St. Zeno and St. Fermo, and 
at Padua in the great aisleless church of 
the Eremitani. 

There is much painting in the interior 
of this Duomo at Ferrara. The semi- 
dome of the richly stalled choir, remod- 
elled in 1499 by the Ferrarese Rosette, one 
of the earliest of the classical revivalists, 
represents the Last Judgement. It is from 
the brush of Bastianino, a favourite pupil 
and good imitator of Michael Angelo, and 
has been extolled by Lanzi for its grandeur 
of design, the great variety of its figures, 
the judicious disposition of the groups, and 
the pleasing repose which it presents to 
the eye of the spectator. The rest of the 
mural decoration is the work of the last 
century, and as it has been carried out in 
202 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the Raffaellesque style, steers a medium 
course between the archaic school on the one 
hand and the ultra-naturalistic on the 
other. 

A curious but pleasant feature of the in- 
terior of Ferrara Cathedral is the manner 
in which the architect has broken up the 
great length of its nave by quasi-transepts, 
that is to say, in the first bay on either 
hand immediately on entering and also in 
the third bay beyond he has carried his 
arch above the rest, treating the roof over 
it dome-wise. There is in addition a larger 
and bona fide transept between the nave 
and the choir, whose construction, as well 
as that of the lesser transepts, can be 
studied from the exterior, where the walls 
are for the most part left in their original 
twelfth-century condition, with a series of 
tall, shallow arcades in continuation of the 
lowest tier of the west front. All above 
them has been modernized in the very 
worst and feeblest phase of pseudo-classical. 

Viewed from the narthex, which runs 
the width of the church between the outer 
and inner west walls, the great length and 
unencumbered area of Ferrara Cathedral 
is undoubtedly very striking, but it is 
203 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

hardly one which a medievalist would re- 
visit with much pleasure. 

Those Pointed styles which awakened so 
many recollections, and which called forth 
some of the best and most holy feelings in 
the mind of the Englishman during the 
coldest and laxest days of Church disci- 
pline, had no counterpart in that of the 
Italian. He looked upon Gothic as an in- 
vention of the Northern barbarians, and a 
combination of disproportions and disso- 
nances. Its twilight pale was to him the 
sullen gloom of Northern forests and of 
skies for ever clouded; its clustered pil- 
lars he regarded as mere confusion, ill- 
contrived bundles of stone; the apparent 
length appeared to him the result of nar- 
rowness and disproportion; the pointed 
arch, the consequence of ignorance in not 
knowing the art of forming a round one; 
the tracery of the windows, happy inven- 
tions to obstruct the light; in short, he 
looked upon the whole Gothic style, or 
Tedesca, as he called it, as an ill-assorted 
mass of incongruities, disproportions, en- 
cumbrance, confusion, darkness and in- 
tricacy; well adapted, indeed, as were the 
forests of Teutonland, to the gloom and 
204 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

horror of Druidical sacrifices and Runic 
incantations, 

Barbara ritu; 
Sacra Deum, structae divis feralibus arae,^ 

but very ill-calculated for the purposes of 
a Christian congregation, the order and 
decorum of its rites and the festive cele- 
bration of its mysteries. 

While I was inspecting the Cathedral, 
the Canons were monotoning the matutinal 
offices in the choir by accumulation, and 
the sacristan was arranging the altars in 
the side chapels attended by an underling. 
From the scraps of conversation which 
reached my ears from time to time, ill will 
appeared to exist between the parties, who 
were accompanied by a neat white cat, the 
property of one of those elderly dames who 
may often be seen industriously plying the 
needle in Italian churches. Puss, who after 
the manner of her species evinced the great- 
est curiosity in the proceedings, afterwards 
took a stroll on her own account about the 
aisles, and finally walking in the stateliest 
manner and with tail erect up the choir, dis- 
appeared behind the high altar where the 

* Lucan. 

205 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Canons* Mass was being celebrated. How- 
ever, as nobody took the slightest notice, I 
came to the conclusion that puss was a per- 
sona grata with the ecclesiastics who were 
occupying their stalls around the apse. 

Later in the day — it was the Saturday in 
Whitsun week — I was speeding towards 
Bologna, that " mother of cities," celebrated 
alike in arts and in letters, and presenting 
manifold objects of interest to the scholar 
and the dilettante. The halls which were 
trod by Lanfranc and Irnerius, and the ceil- 
ings which glow with the colours of Guido 
and the Caracci, the churches which are 
very numerous and represent almost every 
phase of Italian architecture, the palaces and 
the apparently interminable vistas of arcades 
which line the streets, can never be neglected 
by any to whom learning and taste are dear. 

My first care on arrival was to seek out 
that singular congeries of seven churches 
grouped together under the general name of 
St. Stefano, taking as my point de depart 
those towers of the Asinelli and Garisendi, 
which, inclining crosswise as if bowing to 
each other, form one of the most conspicuous 
and well-known features in the panorama of 
the city. 

206 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Ouring the twelfth century, when the 
cities of Italy, tutte piene di tirranna, were 
rivals in arms as afterwards in arts, watch- 
towers of unusual elevation were frequently 
erected. In Venice, in Pisa, in Cremona, in 
Modena and in Florence these singular 
structures yet remain; but none are more 
remarkable than the towers of the Asinelli 
and Garisenda families in Bologna. 

The latter has been immortalized in the 
verse of Dante. When the poet and his 
guide are snatched up by the huge Antaeus, 
the bard compares the stooping stature of 
the giant to the tower of the Garisendi, 
which, as the spectator stands at its base 
while the clouds are sailing from the quarter 
to which it inclines, seems to be falling on 
his head: 

As appears 
The tower of Garisenda from beneath 
Where it doth lean, if chance a passing cloud 
So sail across that opposite it hangs; 
Such then Antzeus seemed, as at mine ease 
I marked him stooping. 

The tower of the Asinelli rises to the 
height of about 310 feet, and is said to be 
three feet and a half out of the perpendicu- 
lar. 

207 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

I ascended. The evening was favourable 
for a view, and I could well distinguish 
Imola, Ferrara and Modena, as well as the 
hills about Verona, seeming to rise abruptly 
from the dead flat which extends on three 
sides of Bologna. 

The Garisenda Tower, erected probably 
by the family of the Garisendi, is i6o feet 
in height, and inclines as much as eight feet 
from the perpendicular. The leaning char- 
acter of these Bolognese towers is probably 
attributable to the carelessness or ill fortune 
with which their foundations were prepared, 
converted by the Italians into an additional 
proof of the skill of the architect, who was 
able to make a tower lean so far over its 
base without falling. Of architectural de- 
sign these structures possess no more than 
the chimney of a factory, being merely tall 
square brick towers with, for their sole orna- 
ment, a machicolated balcony at the top. 

Thus it was that, from Garisenda's aerial 
height, I was enabled to locate St. Stefano's 
without indulging in any speculative Italian 
on my own account; unlike Sir Gilbert 
Scott and Benjamin Ferrey when in quest of 
this church during their visit to Bologna in 
1 85 1. In his Personal and Professional 
208 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Recollections Sir Gilbert amusingly narrates 
how they, having inquired of a benign-look- 
ing elderly gentleman the way to this singu- 
lar group of buildings, were led by him 
silently through two or three streets, con- 
ducted into the middle of the church, shaken 
hands with in dumb show, and so taken 
leave of. 

The exact raison d'etre of this curious 
labyrinth of churches, most of which are of 
great antiquity, is hard to account for. It 
is a collection of buildings of all sizes and 
forms, the only principle of unity being, as 
far as I could see, that every incident of the 
Passion is objectively represented — on a 
large scale — in some one part or other of 
the group; so that one may go from place 
to place in a regular course, and so pursue 
the events of the Passion and merit indul- 
gences. During the two hours which I 
passed in trying to unravel the architectural 
mysteries of these churches, persons came in 
and kissed pillars and crosses, with a few 
seconds' prayer at each, and then retired. 

There can be no doubt that the site of St. 
Stefano at Bologna is that of a pagan tem- 
ple, the materials for which have been freely 
used in the construction of some of the build- 
209 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ings composing it. Antique marble col- 
umns, caps and bases, not always fitting into 
one another, and rarely or never in their 
original places, are discoverable in their 
various parts. 

The first church is that of II Santissimo 
Crocifisso. The second, that of St. Sepolcro, 
stands between it and number three, which 
is dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul. The 
fourth church, styled the Atrio di Pilato, is 
a quadrangle with a cloistered walk on two 
sides, and lies immediately behind St. Sepol- 
cro, beneath which is, number five, a crypt 
or confessionary. The sixth church, called 
La Madonna della Consolazione, is formed 
in a court, likewise cloistered, to the east of 
number one, and from its northern walk we 
enter the seventh church, dedicated to the 
Holy Trinity. 

The Santissimo Crocifisso, through which 
the other churches are generally approached, 
has a very good early pointed facade, but 
interiorly it has been modernized and is un- 
interesting. 

Passing through a door on its left side, 
and descending some steps, we enter the most 
interesting church of the group, the octag- 
onal St. Sepolcro, originally the baptistery 
210 



BOLOGNA 

5t. Stefano, from the West 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

either to the contiguous SS. Peter and Paul 
or to the Holy Trinity, from which it is 
separated by the Atrio di Pilato, now con- 
taining the font. Although octagonal with- 
out, St. Sepolcro is dodecagonal within, the 
twelve round arches which separate the 
domed space from the surrounding aisle 
springing from tall circular columns, 
coupled in the western half of the dodeca- 
gon, and single in the eastern. One of each 
of the coupled columns is of marble, the 
others are all of red brick; indeed, very 
little stone is used at all, that material ap- 
pearing only in the capitals of the columns, 
and in the little shafts of the coupled arcades 
which light the space above the circumam- 
bient aisle. Almost in the centre arises a tall 
marble erection of early Pointed Gothic 
character which appears to serve a threefold 
purpose — as the place of sepulture of St. 
Petronio, as a pulpit or ambon, and as the 
platform for the altar. The three sculptured 
panels in the back of this shrine within the 
shallow trefoiled arch represent the Resur- 
rection. In the centre panel is the angel sit- 
ting on the empty tomb; in the left-hand 
panel the holy women are seen approaching 
the sepulchre ; and in the right hand one are 
211 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the guards sleeping. Beneath the figure of 
the seated angel is inscribed, " Quivi riposa 
il corpo del gloriosi S. Petronio, Vesc e pro- 
tett di Bolog." — " Here rests the body of 
St. Petronius, bishop and patron of Bo- 
logna." 

Graceful pillarets, continued as a handrail 
to the staircase leading to the top of the 
shrine, encompass the altar, at which a Low 
Mass was being celebrated while I was in 
the building. 

The ambon, adjoining the sepulchre on 
the left, looking towards the west, has very 
large and bold carvings of the evangelistic 
symbols on its northern and eastern faces. 

SS. Pietro e Paolo, entered from the 
church just described by a door in the north- 
ern ambulatory, is a Romanesque parallel 
triapsidal basilica of extremely simple char- 
acter, and, from the paucity of window 
openings, very sombre. The pillars support- 
ing the coupled arches, and secured by iron 
ties and bands, are cylinders with capitals 
whose foliaging is a kind of cross between 
the Corinthian acanthus and the Gothic 
" stiff-leafed " forms. 

One column on the south side has an Ionic 



212 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

capital. The intermediate piers are remark- 
able masses of brick formed of four half- 
columns attached to a square nucleus. 

In the Atrio di Pilato we find pillars of 
similar shape, but with plain cubical capitals 
forming the arcade which runs along its 
north and south sides, and reminding one 
rather of the great atrium of St. Ambrose 
at Milan. This court opens into the three- 
aisled Church of the Holy Trinity, in which 
are some graceful columns. The altar is 
placed at the north end, but I suspect its 
original place was in one of the recesses 
opening out of the easternmost of the three 
aisles, the church being built with its long- 
est part running from north to south. 

The last of this singular congeries of 
buildings to which I shall allude is the large 
cloister adjoining the Church of the Trinity 
on the south and that of the Crocifisso on the 
east. It has four ambulatories, above each 
of which is an upper story such as may be 
seen in some German cathedrals, as, for in- 
stance, at Hildesheim and Halberstadt. The 
lower, and earlier, walks have very simple 
round arches resting generally on four slen- 
der shafts detached from each other. The 



213 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

upper ambulatories have a continuous ar- 
cade of deep round arches supported on 
delicate pillarets coupled transversely and 
crowned with rather elongated capitals which 
exhibit considerable variety in their foliaged 
ornament. 

The wall above this arcade is built of vari- 
ous-coloured bricks — green, red and yellow, 
arranged in patterns, with no little beauty 
of effect. The cornice is very peculiar, be- 
ing in part inlaid with pattern tiles and in 
part with tiles cut to a shape and set forward 
at an angle from the face of the wall. The 
whole work is of great value as an example 
of coloured wall decoration, which is en- 
tirely without the usual architectural mould- 
ings. 

Bologna contains two churches built re- 
spectively by the Dominican and Franciscan 
Orders of Friars Preachers, which were 
principally and essentially designed for 
preaching and teaching, " in order thereby 
to communicate to others the fruits of con- 
templation, and to procure the salvation of 
souls." For this purpose they took up their 
abodes in the crowded cities, where their 
churches were usually adapted to the accom- 
modation of large congregations. 
214 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Bernard us valles, montes Benedictus amabat, 
Oppida Franciscus, celebres Ignatius urbes. 

The naves were capacious, sometimes, as 
in the destroyed church of the Dominicans 
at Ghent, built in a single span without 
aisles, although no absolute rule is applica- 
ble to define the arrangement of churches of 
these Orders, which exhibit great diversity 
in the form of their plan, from that of the 
venerable basilica to the elegant creations of 
the Dominican architects of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, for this Order gave 
a vigorous impulse to the fine arts, and scope 
for the exercise of the talents of eminent 
architects and unrivalled painters and sculp- 
tors. 

Spacious as were the churches of the Fri- 
ars Preachers generally, they were often far 
too small for the crowd of hearers, who were 
obliged to adjourn to the piazza for a ser- 
mon in the open air. The plan of the primi- 
tive churches first granted to the Order, and 
continued in later times, has been but slightly 
modified in many churches built by the Fri- 
ars Preachers in Italy. The breadth of the 
nave by which they were distinguished was 
retained or amplified, the transept when in- 
215 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

troduced was most frequently at the east end, 
so that the apse or central chapel alone pro- 
jected beyond it and formed the choir.* 
Hence it will be inferred that there were 
certain provincial peculiarities, and that 
while in Italy the basilica was in some de- 
gree the basis of the plans, in the French 
provinces the twin nave was adopted as at 
Toulouse, Paris and Strasburg; and such 
variations verify the statement that the de- 
signs of the Friars Preachers exhibit great 
latitude and dissimilarity; their facility in 
adaptation is borne out in practice in the 
venerable Dominican rite, which much re- 
sembles the old English use of Sarum. This 
was celebrated with much solemnity on the 
Trinity Sunday morning of my visit in their 
great church at Bologna, the ceremonial of 
the censing of the altar, when the officiating 

' The following are a few of the most remarkable churches 
built by the Dominican Order: St. Andrew's Hall, Norwich; 
Notre-Dame, Louvain ; the Church of the Jacobins, Toulouse, 
remarkable for the manner in which it is divided by a row of 
columns down the middle into two parts which terminate in 
a common apse; churches at Erfurt, Ratisbon and Strasburg; 
SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice; Sta. Anastasia, Verona; Sta. 
Maria delle Grazie, Milan; St. Dominic, Prato; Sta. Katerina, 
Pisa; Sta. Maria Novella, Florence; and Sta. Maria sopra 
Minerva, Rome. 

216 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

clergy passed completely round it by means 
of the doorways contrived in the wall con- 
necting the reredos with the pillars of the 
choir, being a particularly solemn and im- 
pressive feature in the rite. 

Dominic de Guzman, the patriarch of the 
Order, was born of an illustrious family at 
Calarogo in Old Castile in 1170. At the age 
of twenty-five he joined the Canons Regular 
of Osma, and he was eventually chosen 
prior. In 1203 ^^ conceived the idea of 
establishing a new Order for the defence 
of the faith, and in the following year set 
out on a pilgrimage to Rome with the 
Bishop of Osma. With six followers, whom 
he clothed in the habit of the Canons Reg- 
ular, Dominic commenced the formation of 
the Order in Toulouse; from this lowly ori- 
gin it soon made stupendous progress. 

In 1 2 16 Fulk, Bishop of Toulouse, with 
the consent of the Chapter, granted to Dom- 
inic three churches to which convents were 
added; that of St. Romanus became the first 
monastery of the Order, and the model for 
later foundations elsewhere. Three days be- 
fore Christmas of the same year the Order 
was confirmed by Pope Honorius III at the 
Pontifical Palace adjoining Sta. Sabina. 
217 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Dominic took his departure from Rome 
after Easter of the following year and re- 
joined his brethren in Toulouse, of whom 
there were sixteen — eight Frenchmen, seven 
Spaniards and Brother Lawrence, an Eng- 
lishman. These were to become the new 
apostles of a later age, and to be dispersed 
far and wide as soon as they had been as- 
sembled; the great object of the Dominican 
institute, in contradistinction to that of the 
regular clergy, being to go out two and two 
from town to town preaching and mission- 
izing, and not to settle down to parochial 
duties. Three years had hardly elapsed 
after the dispersion of the brethren ere they 
possessed convents in France, Italy, Spain, 
Germany and Poland; and on Whit-Sun- 
day, 1 2 19, the first General Chapter of the 
Order was held in Bologna, where Dominic 
passed his latter years. Dying in 1221, a 
costly tomb, one of the earliest triumphs of 
the genius of Niccola Pisano, was placed 
over his remains. 

The exterior of this Dominican church at 
Bologna, though uncouth in the mass, still 
retains a good deal of its Gothic beauty in 
the west front, the lofty chapels round the 



218 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

choir with their two tiers of lancet windows, 
and the great northern apsidal transept. 

The interior, however, was so completely 
transformed in the eighteenth century as to 
have completely lost its Pointed character, 
traceable now only in the plan. The Church 
of St. John Lateran at Rome would appear 
to have furnished the model, evident from 
the ten arcades into which its enormously 
long nave is divided. They are alternately 
a round-headed and a square bay, the former 
rising from Ionic pilasters, the latter from 
circular columns of the same order. At the 
Lateran Church, however, the square bay is 
solid and filled with large canopied figures,^ 
at Bologna it is open. 

The wall space over each square-headed 

• ^ This, it should be noted, is but a modernization ; the guilt 
of which must rest upon the head of Borromini, who walled 
up the old columns of St. John Lateran in huge piers, and 
transformed the whole interior into its present shape. Among 
his original designs in Rome, the Church of St. Agnes in the 
Piazza Navona, though extravagant and faulty, has redeeming 
features, and is not his worst. That unenviable distinction 
belongs to the little Church of San Carlino at the Four Fountains, 
a building whose whole cubic contents are said not to equal 
one of the piers of St. Peter's. On its puny front the outlines 
undulate like waves; and columns large and small, pedestals, 
entablatures and balustrades, doors, windows, niches, panels 
and sculptures, jostle each other as if fighting for room. 

219 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

bay is relieved with a framed picture, other- 
wise the interior is devoid of colour, yet, in 
spite of the disappointment occasioned by 
finding a thirteenth-century church so com- 
pletely modernized, it is impossible not to 
admire its grand spaciousness and the re- 
straint which has been exercised in its furni- 
ture and decoration. 

A lettered slab in the pavement of the 
north transept attracted my attention. Stoop- 
ing down I read as follows: 

Nobiles de Guidottis sibi et suis. 

And this is all to mark the resting-place 
of the Bolognese Guido Reni, whose works, 
if deficient in strength and expression, are 
unsurpassed in grace and beauty; whose beau- 
ideal in respect to sacred subjects was ad- 
mirable; and whose genius is strongly attested 
by the celestial character so peculiarly im- 
pressed on his figures. 

St. Francesco, the other great church built 
by the Preaching Orders in Bologna, and 
situated a little to the west of the Piazza 
Vittorio Emanuele, has escaped pretty well 
from the wholesale classicizing inflicted on 
St. Dominico, although it suffered much 
during the French occupation of 1798, when 
220 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

it was turned into the customs-house, not be- 
ing rendue au culte until 1847.^ 

This is a church of great size, built almost 
entirely of brick even to the piers, and in a 
very simple and severe early Pointed style. 
The nave is of surprising height, vaulted in 
octopartite bays. The clerestory windows 
are blunt lancet-headed. There is no trifo- 
rium, but an arcade of broad Pointed arches 
springing from octagonal brick piers with 
caps and bases of a boldness very unusual 
in Italian Pointed. Without any interven- 
tion of screen, or even diminished breadth, 
the choir exhibits a seven-sided apse lighted 
as to its clerestory by very simple lancets 
filled with some of the best modern stained 
glass of my acquaintance in Italy. It has been 
carried out in the true early thirteenth-cen- 
tury style with somewhat elongated and ar- 
chaically treated figures such as we see in 
the clerestories of Bourges and Chartres and 
Lyons. 

The central lancet has a grandly treated 
Crucifixion with SS. Mary and John. Very 
little white glass is used in these lancets, but 

"^ Upon the expulsion of the religious orders from Italy In 
1866 St, Francesco was once more secularized, but was given 
back again to the Church twenty years later. 

221 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

we do not seem to desire it in windows of 
this style. A curious feature is the small cir- 
cular window placed above the lancet in 
each bay right up at the apex of the vaulting 
cell. It may be a German importation, as 
it occurs in the apses of St. Mary at Geln- 
hausen, and in that of the western choir of 
Bamberg Cathedral. A series of very acutely 
pointed arches separates the choir from the 
procession path and series of chapels open- 
ing therefrom. According to the original 
design the transepts at St. Francesco did not 
extend beyond the breadth of the aisles, but 
chapels had been added at their extremities 
in the rococo style, and a modern lady- 
chapel built at the east end. All these ac- 
cretions have now vanished, and new Gothic 
work, presumably on the lines of the old, but 
far from satisfactory, substituted. In shape 
the chapels which radiate from the proces- 
sion path of the apse, alternate between the 
apsidal and the square ended, looking as 
though the architect could not make up his 
mind which form to adopt. The general 
effect is most ungraceful, and cannot be com- 
pared for a moment with that of any one 
of the French chevets. Along the aisles 
chapels had been built of various dates and 
222 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

designs, making the exterior very varied. 
These have all been removed during the ex- 
tensive works that are still in progress at this 
church since the 'forties of the last century. 
Externally St. Francesco is remarkable for 
its noble flying buttresses round the choir 
and on the sides of its grandly clerestoried 
nave; for the low pitch of its roofs; for an 
extremely beautiful and lofty square tower, 
of moulded brick, elaborately panelled in 
various stages at the south-east of the plan; 
and for its very imposing west front which 
is of the customary Italian screen-like char- 
acter and has tombs bracketed out on its 
lower part, and a rich recessed door with a 
moulding of vines under a canopied portal. 
Above its round window and couple of large 
plain lancets a cross of stone is inserted in 
the gable; there is also a rich corbel-tabling 
imparting a delightful finish to a mass of 
red brickwork which appeared to unusual 
advantage under the cloudless sky of a calm 
June evening. 

The gem of the interior of St. Francesco 
is its reredos, restored about 1845 by Pro- 
fessor Filippo Antolini from existing frag- 
ments.* The whole is of most delicate work- 

* It was originally the work of Giacobello and Pietro della 
223 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

manship and carried out in white Carrara 
marble. Its design comprehends a broad 
central niche, filled with a sculpture of the 
Coronation of the Virgin, and supported by- 
four niches on each side, each containing the 
figure of a saint. 

Above the canopies of this lower range are 
nine smaller niches with half-figures in them. 
The central compartment rises higher, with 
another niche containing figures of the 
Blessed Virgin and the Holy Infant, the 
spiry canopy of which terminates in a beau- 
tifully wrought crucifix with our Lady and 
the beloved Disciple standing by it. 

The eight subsidiary compartments termi- 
nate in lower pinnacles, and the design is 
flanked by buttressed pinnacles ending in fig- 
ures of angels blowing trumpets. The altar, 
which was renewed at the same time as the 
reredos, is a large slab of white marble, sup- 
ported in front by four carved spiral col- 
umns of the same material. Behind the col- 
umns is a front carved in very low relief in 
arabesque patterns. The reredos is placed 
on a high marble structure which rises above 
the altar. 

Masscgne, and for which in 1388 they received 2,150 golden 
ducats — a very large sum in those days. 

224 



BOLOGNA 
Altar Piece in 5t. Francesco 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

This substructure appeared to me to be 
over-large, having the effect of raising the 
reredos far too much, so that the efifect of 
its own delicate work and its relation to the 
church are both spoilt. 

The substructure itself is, although in- 
tended to be Pointed, almost classical in 
character, horizontal lines prevailing, and 
the panelling being somewhat wanting in 
depth. The criticism of this detail which I 
have thus been constrained to make does not 
make any abatement to the high praise which 
is due to the work as a whole. For the pe- 
riod of its execution it must be looked upon 
as a work of some importance, since it was 
one of the first movements in Italy towards 
a revival of the Pointed style. 

The huge Church of St. Petronio, which, 
from its central position, is to Bologna what 
the Dom is to Cologne, was commenced 
when the fourteenth century was drawing to 
its close, from the plans of Antonio Vin- 
cenzi, celebrated as one of the sixteen Re- 
formatori and as the ambassador of the Bo- 
lognese to the Venetian Republic in 1396. 

Designed to eclipse in splendour the Du- 
omo of Florence, St. Petronio was to have 
been a cruciform church of the most grandi- 
225 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ose dimensions — the largest in Europe in 
fact. From north to south (for St. Petronio 
does not orientate) it was to have measured 
nearly 800 feet; its greatest breadth, namely, 
at the transepts, was to have been 525 feet, 
and it would have covered ground to the ex- 
tent of 212,000 square feet. Of this gigantic 
design, the six-bayed nave and its aisles, with 
their lateral chapels and south-east campa- 
nile, were alone completed. The transepts 
were just turned and the three doorways of 
the western fagade finished. But even in this 
state, the dimensions of St. Petronio are enor- 
mous, the actual area which it covers being 
74,000 square feet. The length of the nave 
is 383 feet, each of the six bays dividing it 
from its aisles being very nearly 60 feet from 
one huge pier to the other, and equalling in 
span the breadth of the nave. The width of 
the church including the chapels is 156 feet. 
The first view of St. Petronio, although 
striking, cannot be called prepossessing, ow- 
ing to the mass of bare brickwork which, as 
at Sta. Anastasia at Verona, surmounts the 
western portals. Ranking amongst the finest 
examples of the Italian Gothic, these door- 
ways at St. Petronio are covered with bas- 
reliefs setting forth various events of Scrip- 
226 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ture history from the Creation to the Acts of 
the Apostles, and are ornamented with busts 
of prophets and sibyls quite Raffaellesque in 
conception. 

The central doorway and its bas-reliefs 
were justly considered the masterpiece of 
Jacopo dalla Querela, and were entirely ex- 
ecuted by him in grey limestone provided 
by the Reverenda Fabrica. Their icon- 
ography deserves the most careful study. 
In the centre of the arch is the Almighty 
surrounded by thirty-two half-figures of the 
patriarchs and prophets. 

In the architrave are five subjects from the 
New Testament, and on each pilaster the 
same number of subjects from the Old Tes- 
tament, from the Creation to the Deluge. 
Under the arch are statutes of the Virgin 
and Child, St. Petronius and St. Ambrose. 

According to Vasari, dalla Querela de- 
voted twelve years to this doorway, receiving 
3,600 golden florins as the price of his la- 
bour. 

The left-hand doorway is remarkable for 
the angels and sibyls round the arch, chiefly 
from the chisel of Tribolo, the friend of Ben- 
venuto Cellini. Of the four subjects on the 
left pilaster, the first, third and fourth are by 
227 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Tribolo, as well as the fourth on the right 
pilaster. Tribolo was assisted in these works 
by Seccadenari, Properzia di Rossi, the Bo- 
lognese Sappho, and by Cioli and Solosmeo, 
pupils of Sansovino. 

The three other subjects on the right pilas- 
ter are by Alfonso Lombardo, and represent 
different scenes from the Old Testament. 
The sculptor of the second subject on the left 
pilaster, Jacob giving his blessing to Isaac, 
is unknown ; Alfonso Lombardo's " Resur- 
rection " under the arch of this doorway is 
a superb piece of work, replete with simple 
dignity and truth, and as such highly ex- 
tolled by Vasari. The taste and purity of 
Tribolo is further displayed in the dexter 
portal of this fagade at St. Petronio. To him 
are due the angels in the arch, the sibyls, the 
eight subjects from the Old Testament on 
the pilasters and the effigy of the Virgin on 
one side under the arch. The group of Nic- 
odemus supporting the dead body of our 
Lord is by Amico, and the figure of St. John 
the Evangelist, corresponding to Tribolo's 
of the Virgin, is by Ercole Seccadenari. 

It may not be generally known that about 
fifty years ago a move was made in the di- 
rection of completing this gigantic work, or 
228 



BOLOGNA 

5t. Petronio 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

that Pius IX on the occasion of his last visit 
to Bologna — at that time {1857) the second 
capital of the States of the Church — prom- 
ised a sum amounting to £13,560 in aid of 
the undertaking. 

After the annexation of Bologna by the 
kingdom of Italy the municipality sought to 
obtain from the new government the sum 
promised by the Pope, but the case w^as de- 
cided against them on the plea that Pius had 
intended it as a personal, and not an official, 
gift. Now, however, after years of litiga- 
tion, the courts have reversed the decision, 
declaring that the Italian Government is lia- 
ble not only for the principal sum, but for a 
considerable amount of interest as well. But 
will the glorious fagade of St. Petronio, 
larger far than the majestic fronts of Orvieto 
and Siena, ever become an accomplished 
fact? £13,000 would certainly not suffice to 
finish a work conceived on such a magnifi- 
cent scale. When, however, one remembers 
the completion of the west front of the Du- 
omo at Florence after long centuries, there 
still seems hope that the dreams of the archi- 
tect who designed that of St. Petronio may 
one day be realized. Even in its present state 
— lacking as it does its transepts and choir, 
229 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the latter being represented by a windowless 
apse hitched on to the vast nave and painted 
in imitation of a groin and a classic altar- 
piece — St. Petronio is Bologna's chief glory; 
but only one, after all, among the priceless 
artistic treasures of a city which in late years 
has done so much in the way of architectural 
restoration. 

Long after St. Petronio was left in neglect, 
Bologna built her cathedral in the classic 
style. Why instead the citizens did not 
spend their money in finishing St. Petronio 
and crown it with cathedral dignity is one 
of the points of Bolognese history about 
which the lovers of Italian Gothic may well 
be curious. 

The sides of the church are interesting but 
less to be admired, inasmuch as they exhibit 
some questionable features borrowed from 
Germany, and introduced solely for the sake 
of effect. I would mention, inter alia, the 
construction of a window round two sides of 
the angles formed by the nave and the pro- 
jected transept, one half on the western and 
the other on the southern side, with the point 
of the arch curiously canopying over — if I 
may so speak — at the angle. 

Yet, in spite of such singularities, the de- 
230 



t 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tail is fine. The base, of extraordinary height 
and grandeur, is of stone and marble; and 
each chapel has been finished with a steep 
gable cut ofif square at the top and lighted 
by a noble window, generally of four com- 
partments mainly constructed in brick, but 
with shafted monials and traceries fairly exe- 
cuted in stone. 

Here brick is used to the utmost allowable 
extent, the architect having wisely changed 
it for stone wherever the latter was the more 
conveniently used material. 

A tall campanile, whose weight rests en- 
tirely upon the last chapel on the left, rises 
at the (ecclesiologically) south-east angle. 

It will be remembered that St. Petronio 
consists of the nave and aisles merely of the 
intended church. Following the usual Italian 
tradition, the architect made each of the bays 
of his nave square in plan, whilst those of the 
aisles are oblong compartments with their 
greatest length from east to west. Each 
bay of the aisles has two arches opening into 
the side chapels beyond the aisles, the chapels 
being lighted by large traceried windows of 
four lights and separated from the aisles by 
screens of marble or metal, varying in style 
from the most delicate Venetian Gothic in 
231 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the former material to the simplest cross- 
framed type in the latter, but each in itself 
a study. 

The walls, the columns, and indeed the 
whole internal work — save only the capitals 
and bases of the huge complex columns, 
which, when I saw them, were swathed in 
crimson drapery — is executed in brick, yet 
with a degree of severity and simplicity in 
detail and general design that impresses one 
from its air of virtuous self-restraint. 

As I have remarked in the chapter intro- 
ductory to this volume, we find none of those 
several interesting phases in Italian Pointed 
Gothic that are so conspicuous on this side 
of the Alps. We see through a part of the 
career of the harsh conflict of the abundant 
classic remains throughout the peninsula; 
and when it did for a short time succeed in 
being free, the result did not appear to ad- 
vantage by the contrast, and it was soon set 
aside in favour of the revival of the classic. 

In decorative detail, however, as it might 
be supposed in presence of such vast stores 
of conventional classic ornament, Italian 
Gothic did not maintain the same conflict 
as in the principles of construction, and 
throughout its career it affected ancient prec- 
232 






The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

edents rather than natural types; thus, the 
foliage of the acanthus is the general motif 
for the carvings, with the sharp or round- 
lobed leaf according as native or Byzantine 
influence predominated in the different lo- 
calities. 

In the vast church of St. Petronio at Bo- 
logna v^e see all the general characteristics 
and also those of detail just mentioned. Ver- 
tical lines so far preponderate that there is 
absolutely no continuous horizontal line to 
be seen within the structure, which is produc- 
tive of a weak, ill-connected effect. The 
transverse rib, the diagonal rib and the wall 
rib, each with edge moulds, is carried down 
from ridge to pavement with all the impost 
mouldings broken round them, so that not 
even the capitals break the continuity of these 
vertical lines; the pier arches likewise have 
their edge-mouldings carried down with those 
of the vaulting ribs in the same compound 
pier. 

In the church now under review, we have 
all the general principles of Gothic carried 
almost to excess, and in the windows of the 
chapels opening from the aisles we have 
Gothic details in their subdivision into coup- 
lets of two lights by mullions, arches acutely 
233 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

pointed and cusped, and cinquefoiled circles 
in the heads and a multifoiled cusped circle 
in the space formed by the arch spanning the 
two-light couplets. There are also cusped 
octofoiled circular windows in the upper 
space of the walling of both nave and aisles 
beneath the wall ribs of the vaulting, and the 
method of moulding all the edges of the 
vaulting ribs and arches is according to the 
true medieval system. Still there is in St. 
Petronio a lack of Gothic feeling, and strong 
reminiscences of classical work to be seen in 
the great comparative breadth of the com- 
partments, in the flat, pilaster-like form of the 
bearing member of the transverse rib of the 
vaulting, and in the section of that rib itself 
in the treatment of the banded imposts, which 
do duty as capitals at the level of the spring- 
ing of the pier arches, but which are wholly 
different from pure Gothic capitals, and in 
their successive ranges of acanthus-like leaves 
recall the Corinthian of older days. Then, 
by repetition of the same class of enriched 
banded imposts at the springing of the vault- 
ing ribs, the effect given is of a secondary 
stage of classic pilasters, placed upon, though 
without intervening base, the lower impost of 
the pier of the nave arcade. 
234 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Again, in the plain, oblong-sectioned pier 
of division between the aisle and the chapels, 
with its quasi-cornice as imposts, and absence 
of edge-moulding to those arches, it is as if 
the architect had forgotten for the nonce the 
role he had been striving to play, and had 
in forgetfulness relapsed to the classic charac- 
ter with which he was really more familiar. 
There is no straining after height, no feeling 
of growth in the structure, no subdivision 
into ascending stages of arcade, triforium 
and clerestory, no contrast by string-courses 
to enhance the value of what height there is, 
no delicate proportioning of the several cap- 
itals to the scale of the members they have 
to support. But, in lieu thereof, we perceive 
a contentment with the breadth of the sep- 
arate features which gives a painfully discon- 
nected character to the whole. 

The glories of St. Petronio at Bologna are, 
unquestionably, its stained glass and the 
screens of varied style which those twenty- 
two chapels enclose. 

The former is invested with a high interest 
from the very fine examples of the several 
periods which it presents, and its rarity; the 
Italians for climatic reasons generally using 
small windows, thus obviating the necessity 
235 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of painted glass. Thus it is that we see com- 
paratively little stained glass in Italy, the 
transalpine architects appearing to have 
thought the church walls the best vehicle for 
the painter to tell his story upon, knowing 
that the more space he left for his brush to 
work upon, the better his brother artist 
would be pleased. The art of glass painting 
was as favourite a one north of the Alps as 
mosaic and fresco painting were south of 
them. 

The best coloured glass for painted win- 
dows in Italy, called " smalti," was brought 
from France and Germany, and the artists 
who established schools of glass-painting and 
executed the finest works in Italy were either 
natives of those countries or had learnt their 
art in them, like the architects of the time 
that witnessed the erection of the gigantic 
fabric now under review. 

Of the stained glass in St. Petronio, per- 
haps the finest and most brilliant is in the 
fourth chapel on the ecclesiologically north, 
but really east side. The window is a four- 
light one, with tracery formed of three 
cusped circles. Each light has three tiers of 
figures representing the Apostles seated be- 
neath canopies of a much more conventional 
236 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

middle-pointed character than would have 
been employed by a Northern artist at the 
date of the execution of this glass, early in 
the fifteenth century. The circle above each 
pair of lights has the Annunciation, St. Ga- 
briel occupying the sinister circle and the 
Blessed Virgin the dexter one, while in the 
top circle is our Lord in Majesty, vested in 
a light ruby robe and wearing a crossed stole 
and holding a book. The aureole is lozenge- 
shaped, and the field azure. The borders to 
the lights are specially worthy of study. 
Small green circles compose the groundwork 
of the two upper tiers of figures, whose col- 
ours reminded me of those employed by 
Hardman when under the guidance of Pu- 
gin. It was eight o'clock in the morning 
when I made my studies of the glass in St. 
Petronio, and the sun was pouring his full 
radiance through this window, casting the 
most lovely hues upon the pavement and fres- 
coed walls of the chapel, but leaving Costa's 
delicately sculptured altarpiece, with its Maj- 
esty and Coronation of the Virgin flanked 
by two tiers of canopied figures, in compara- 
tive obscurity. Rarely have I seen three such 
exquisite specimens of the arts ancillary to 
architecture brought together into so small a 
237 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

space, or under conditions so truly magnifi- 
cent. 

The glazing of the windows in the fifth 
chapel of the same aisle is quite Renaissance. 
Here we have two rows of figures, very rich 
and deep in colouration, standing under can- 
opies. 

In the upper row two of the figures are 
bishops in full pontificals, two are religious 
in monastic habit, while the four below are 
in secular dress. Above the canopies the 
groundwork is blue. A ruby in the cope of 
one of the bishops is singularly fine, and the 
deep browns and blacks in the robes of the 
two monks are certainly very well managed. 
In the seventh chapel the Renaissance glass 
is less refined in tincture, besides which the 
full-length figures are too large for the lights 
in which they are placed. The Majesty and 
the Annunciation again occur in the circles 
above. There may be some reason for the 
repetition of this subject, but it seems at first 
sight to show a poverty of invention. Cross- 
ing to the opposite aisle, we find in the 
Chapel of St. Anthony of Padua some stained 
glass attributed to Michael Angelo. The 
circle in the head of the window has a figure 
of St. Anthony, and that in either subarcua- 
238 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tion, the Annuciation, as usual. The eight 
saints below are under Renaissance canopies. 
Their draperies are bold and simple but their 
attitudes are forced and strained, and there 
is a great deal too much relief given by sha- 
ding to be proper for the material. Another 
chapel in this aisle, the fourth counting from 
the west, has some good early glass. The 
tones of the full-length figures under silvery 
canopies are truly lovely. Here again the 
Annunciation occupies the circles above the 
subarcuations, but the Resurrection takes the 
place of the Majesty in the topmost one. In 
the top circle of the window in the next 
chapel is the figure of a bishop seated upon 
a white throne against a groundwork of blue, 
the whole being very harmonious and pleas- 
ing. In all this glass at St. Petronio very 
little or no white is employed in the figures, 
but the colours are so skilfully blended that 
for once we do not seem to remark its ab- 
sence. 

The Cathedral of Bologna was rebuilt 
piecemeal between 1605 and 1750 on the 
foundations of more than one ancient edifice 
with the exception of its Lombardic campa- 
nile, so that it is intus et in cute Renaissance, 
though of a respectable type. 
239 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Outside it is neither better nor worse than 
the generality of such structures, presenting a 
transeptless carcase with a very tall clere- 
story propped up by cyclopean buttresses 
with tiled slopes, and a grand show front 
giving on to the Via Indipendenza, all car- 
ried out in brick. If not prepossessing with- 
out, Bologna Cathedral is grandiose within. 

The three doorways in Torregiano's west 
front open into the nave, which, as may be 
imagined, is of abnormal breadth, carried 
off, however, by its commendable height. 
Three wide arches on Corinthian pilasters 
coupled tranversely separate it from the 
aisles, which are only a series of chapels. 
Between each of these arches there is, in lieu 
of one great pilaster, a narrower and lower 
arch on coupled pilasters of the Tuscan or- 
der, surmounted by a balconied gallery be- 
hind which the wall is relieved by a pedi- 
mented arch supported by Corinthian half- 
columns in pairs. The cornice along the 
entire length of the nave is richly carved 
with half-figures amid foliage. At the west 
end above the central doorway is a large 
square-headed window, and below it, corre- 
sponding with the Corinthian pilasters of the 
major arcade, two large half-columns of the 
240 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

same order. In the angles of the choir are 
two columns coupled, and of enormous girth, 
fluted and crowned with noble acanthus- 
leafed capitals profusely gilt. The western 
pair of columns supports an entablature from 
which rises a stilted arch whose broad fiat 
soffit is frescoed between the moulded bou- 
tels. 

In ensemble this portion of the church re- 
calls Hawksmoor's St. Mary Woolnoth, and 
its quadripartite vault is painted in a good 
Raffaellesque style such as St. Paul's re- 
quires. On either side, within a low arch 
on Corinthian pilasters is an organ with a 
gallery in front of it, and above, a lunar 
window with bar-like tracery similar to that 
inserted in the choir and transept of the 
Frari Church at Venice. Here is placed the 
sanctuary, raised on a crypt and enclosed 
with marble balustrades and metal gates of 
the most sumptuous description. Twenty 
steps broken up by a landing into twelve and 
eight conduct to the crypt which contains nu- 
merous relics and some works of art, among 
which are a Crucifixion and a group of the 
two Marys weeping over the body of our 
Lord, in terracotta, by Alfonzo Lombardo. 

Opening from the choir into the much 
241 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

lower apse containing the stalls for the 
clergy, and lighted by four plain square- 
headed windows between Corinthian pilas- 
ters, is an arch, and above it Lodovico Ca- 
racci's celebrated fresco of the Annunciation, 
the last work of that artist. The foot of the 
angel bending before the Virgin was a little 
crooked, and the story goes that when the 
aged artist made the discovery he offered to 
defray the expense of re-erecting the scaffold 
in order that he might retouch it, but the 
request was refused, and Lodovico died, it is 
said of grief on this account a few days after. 
The painting on the semi-dome of the apse 
by Fiorini, and coloured by Aretusi, repre- 
sents Christ's charge to St. Peter. 

I " assisted " at High Mass here on Trin- 
ity Sunday. There was no choir, the Gre- 
gorian chant being sustained by the clergy 
in the apse, and unaccompanied. Between 
each Kyrie and sentence of the Gloria in Ex- 
celsis, Credo, etc., the organist played a few 
bars of trivial music. 

Many a student of ecclesiastical music 
starts for Italy under the impression that he 
will hear the sublime strains of Allegri and 
Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso and Vittoria in 
the land of their birth, but when he arrives 
242 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

there he will find himself woefully deceived. 
Experto crede. 

Although my visit to the Land of Song 
extended over the whole of June, which em- 
braced the great festivals of Pentecost, Trinity 
Sunday, Corpus Christi, the Sunday within 
its octave, the Nativity of St. John the Bap- 
tist and St Peter, spent respectively at Ve- 
rona, Bologna, Modena, Piacenza, Pavia and 
Turin, each containing a cathedral of the 
first class, the music I heard in them was of 
the feeblest and most trivial description. 

Travel certainly expands the mind, but it 
destroys many a pleasant illusion. 



243 



CHAPTER VII 

RAVENNA 

Ravenna, the seat of an Archbishop to 
whom the bishops of the Romagna were suf- 
fragan/ owes both its great historical impor- 
tance in the past and its comparatively deso- 
late appearance in the present, to the same 
cause — its position in an alluvial plain, 
formed and continually extended by the de- 
posits brought down by a number of small 
and rapid streams from the neighbouring 
Apennines. 

A glance at the north-east corner of the 
map of Italy will show the reader the gen- 
eral character of the Adriatic coast — broad 
lagoons, sometimes stretching far inland; 
fiat alluvial plains intersected by endless 
dykes; numerous rivers (of which the Po is 
by far the largest and makes the most con- 

* The Romagna has now three archbishoprics, viz., at Bologna, 
Ferrara and Ravenna, with suffragan sees at Bertinoro, Cervia, 
Cesena, Comacchio, Faenza, Forli, Imola, Rimini and Sarsina. 

244 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

spicuous delta) descending from the Apen- 
nines or the Alps; and outside of all a bar- 
rier of islands which have a continued ten- 
dency to become adherent to the shore 
through the new deposits that are brought 
down, and thus to be turned from islands 
into low hills. 

This description suits Venice nearly as 
well as it suits Ravenna, and the chief dif- 
ference between these two great historic cit- 
ies is that the Ravennese lagoons are about 
twenty centuries older than those of Venice. 

The city is now connected with the Adri- 
atic by the Corsini Canal, the two small riv- 
ers Ronco and Montone no longer serving as 
a means of communication between the city 
and the sea. 

" Urbs maxima Ravenna," wrote that fa- 
mous ancient geographer Strabo, " posita est 
tota ligneis compacta aedificiis, acquis diffusa, 
pontibusque, ac lembis peragrata," whence 
it would appear that the original position of 
the city was very similar to that of Venice. 

It was in 402 that Honorius, for strateg- 
ical reasons, removed his court from Con- 
stantinople to Ravenna with every hope of 
making it the most important port on the 
Adriatic. But neither King Canute nor 
245 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Honorius succeeded in compelling the sea 
to their will; and to-day the great seaport 
— the Venice of the Romans — is an un- 
healthy ■ desolated town, left dry by a sea 
which has retired six miles from the harbour 
where once rode the navies of Imperial 
Rome. Truly we may say of Ravenna in 
the words of the Prophet Jeremiah : " How 
doth the city sit solitary, that was full of 
people? how is she become as a widow? she 
that was great among the nations and prin- 
cess among the provinces, how is she become 
tributary? " 

Christianity was introduced here by St. 
ApoUinaris, whom legend represents as the 
personal friend and disciple of St. Peter, 
commissioned by that Apostle from Rome to 
found this illustrious church in the Adriatic, 
and surviving through an ordeal of multi- 
form persecutions to govern his flocks in his 
missionary diocese for twenty-nine years, 
after which period he suffered martyrdom, 
A. D. 74, under Vespasian. Till St. Ursus 
(elected to this See about 400) built the first 
architectonic cathedral at Ravenna under the 
name " Anastasis," the Christians here had 
no other places of worship than cottages, 
performing their devotions " in tiguriis," as 
246 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Agnellus ^ informs us in his chronicle, which 
extends over the period from A. D. 50 to 841. 
Whilst Ravenna was the Imperial residence 
during the period most disastrous for the 
Western Empire, Honorius, Valentinian III 
and Galla Placidia, widow of the second 
Constantine, who took up her abode here, 
enriched the city with a series of ecclesias- 
tical edifices finer than the capital of the 
Eastern Empire, and, as regards internal 
decoration, more interesting than those of 
Rome. To the last-named enlightened pa- 
tron of the arts we owe those mosaics in the 
Baptistery contiguous to the Cathedral, those 
in the chapel of the Archbishop's palace, and 
in SS. Nazario e Celso, which she built as 
a family mausoleum. 

Theodoric the Arian was also a benefactor 
to his capital, and, judged by the light of his 
time, an intelligent autocrat who promoted 
civilization at this centre. 

^ Agnellus was Bishop of Ravenna about 880, and his chron- 
icle, the Liher Pontifcalis EcclesicB Ravennatis, is, although 
written in very indifferent Latin, an invaluable document of 
those earlier ages in the Italian Church. It is minute, scrupu- 
lously careful in detail, and distinguished by the earnestness 
of a fresh and simple nature. It is printed in vol. 11 of Mura- 
tori's Rev. Ital. Scriptores, but by far the best edition is that by 
Holder Egger, in the Monumenta Germania Historica, 1878. 

247 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Ravenna, as the metropolis of the Greek 
Exarchs, became more Byzantine than By- 
zantium itself. After their government had 
lasted a hundred and twenty-five years, the 
last of those vice-regal officers w^as expelled 
in 754 by Astolphus, the Longobard King, 
and Ravenna became, for but a short period 
indeed, the new capital of that semi-barbaric 
people. Soon occurred those events so 
fraught with importance to the temporal in- 
terests of the Papacy, the donation of Pepin 
comprising in the liberal concession to Rome 
(755) the whole of the province which from 
this time began to be styled " Romagna." 
Now the government of Ravenna was ad- 
ministered by her prelates in the name of, 
and in subjection to, the Popes (though cer- 
tain of them seem to have been loath to sub- 
mit to such a yoke) ; but about the time that 
other Italian cities shook off the trammels of 
aristocratic or imperial dominion, Ravenna 
also freed herself from the authority of her 
mitred rulers, and founded her new govern- 
ment on independently republican principles 
with a general council of 250 and a special 
council of seventy citizens. Early in the 
thirteenth century, one of the powerful Tra- 



248 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

versari family disturbed this order of things 
by raising himself to the rank of Duke of 
Ravenna, a title yet new, but without other- 
wise setting aside the institutions of his 
native city. 

In 1240 Ravenna fell under the power of 
the Emperor Frederick II, who did not 
scruple to sacrifice her liberties by consign- 
ing her, eight years afterwards, to the troops 
of Pope Innocent IV, thenceforth to be gov- 
erned by a papal officer with the title Count 
or Rector of Romagna. This new political 
phase was not of long duration, being 
brought to an end about 1300 by the ascend- 
ant influence of the Polenta family, who 
made themselves lords of Ravenna, and re- 
tained that power till nearly the middle of 
the fifteenth century, when, having become 
odious to the citizens, their usurpation was 
overthrown, and the Romagna spontaneously 
placed herself under Venice. 

Till 1509 that Adriatic Republic com- 
prised this acquisition within its territories, 
then ceded it to the Papacy; and, though in 
1527 the Venetians again occupied Ravenna 
in order to make a more efficient stand 
against the mercenary armies of Charles V, 



249 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

three years later they once more handed over 
this possession to Rome by the treaty of 
Bologna. 

The annexation of Ravenna to the Italian 
Kingdom is an event of comparatively recent 
history, and, as well known, was accom- 
plished with hardly a shadow of resistance 
on behalf of the feeble government over- 
thrown. 

At present Ravenna wears an air of deso- 
lation which sheds a gentle melancholy upon 
the soul. The people in its streets and grass- 
grown squares are few, and it has entirely 
lost the indications of commercial prosperity. 

Its appearance is the more mournful from 
its great extent, of which I gained a clear 
idea when I ascended to the walls and took 
the whole city in circumbendibus, and from 
the size and almost unaltered splendour of 
those numerous churches in which, at the 
present day, the one transcendent interest of 
Ravenna consists. 

Fair city, worthy of her ancient fame ! 

The season of her splendour is gone by, 
Yet everywhere its monuments remain. 

No Other city in the world — not even 
Rome itself — can show so many striking 
250 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

examples of the ecclesiastical architecture of 
the period comprised between the fourth and 
eighth centuries. The style is commonly- 
called Byzantine, and no doubt from the 
close connection of Ravenna to Constanti- 
nople, considerable influence was exerted by 
the latter city on the former; but some of 
the most striking features of the Ravenna 
churches — the colonnades, the mosaics, the 
circular campaniles, and perhaps the cupolas 
— are not so much Byzantine as representa- 
tive of early Christian art generally. 

In Rome, where temples and thermae lay 
in splendid and massive ruins on every hand, 
the founders of churches had no need to 
quarry columns nor to sculpture capitals or 
cornices. They had these ready to hand. In 
Ravenna, though both in that city and in 
Constantinople the emperors helped them- 
selves to such precious shafts as were worth 
a sea voyage, the architects originated capital 
and cornice decorations for themselves. The 
general character of the Ravennese sculpture, 
though far ruder than that of Rome in exe- 
cution, is interesting from its simplicity and 
originality. We find the acanthus-leaf cap- 
ital, but in a form which suggests the fresh 
joyousness of living vegetation blown by 
251 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

winds and clinging round the convex mass, 
rather than adhering to it in the old Corin- 
thian manner, and this character of detail 
displays itself in the oldest of Ravenna's 
churches. 

Generally speaking the outline of a Ra- 
vennese basilica is an unadorned and unat- 
tractive pile of brick. If it has any archi- 
tectural grouping or outline about it, it owes 
it to the campanile which a later age has 
added. But if the churches of Ravenna are 
thus unattractive without, they are emphat- 
ically all glorious within. The eye dwells 
with genuine artistic delight on the long un- 
broken rows of pillars and arches, their mar- 
ble shafts, their floriated capitals, sometimes 
the work of the Christian craftsman, some- 
times the spirit of heathendom pressed into 
the service of the sanctuary. The whole plan 
of these buildings allows a great field for 
void spaces; but the void spaces thus left are 
filled up by those wonderful mosaics and 
paintings which look down upon us as fresh 
as they were thirteen hundred years ago. 
They were older when Giotto painted his 
first fresco than Giotto's frescoes are now. 

Christian art in general, but especially the 
mosaic, seems to have attained high excel- 
252 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

lence at Ravenna even earlier than at Rome. 
Indeed, the various works in the latter artis- 
tic form of the fifth and sixth centuries that 
still adorn Ravenna's churches are more in- 
teresting, more elaborate and bolder in com- 
position than the contemporary examples of 
the same art in the Eternal City. Vitreous 
mosaic — crusta vermiculatcB — substituted 
for that in coloured marbles or terra-cotta 
more anciently in use, was first applied under 
the Empire to the adornment of walls and 
ceilings in private churches, sometimes also 
for pavements of temples, or in the banquet 
hall. In this latter material, more capable 
of brilliant effect, mosaic was early adopted 
by the Church for the representation of sa- 
cred subjects; its enduring nature, its suit- 
ability for majestic and colossal figures and 
groups being sufficient recommendation. 

When at Ravenna, lingering in these old 
churches at a late hour, I have frequently 
noticed how the majestic mosaic forms that 
look down from conch of apse or frieze of 
nave gain enhanced effect, more solemnly 
expressive in the dim light, whilst coloured 
representations in fresco became too obscure 
for notice; and it cannot be denied that, 
though some charms are more easily felt than 
253 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

explained, many of these early Christian 
works of art have power to impress and in- 
terest, quite apart from the claims of the 
beautiful, and even when their characteris- 
tics are actually rude or grotesque. 

The mosaic adornment of churches became 
conspicuous at Ravenna in the fifth century, 
through the care of its archbishops, of Ho- 
norius and of Galla Placidia, and in the latter 
part of the sixth century, after the fall of the 
Gothic kingdom, the churches rebuilt or re- 
constructed for Catholic instead of Arian * 
worship here received new embellishments, 
though in some instances doubt exists whether 
their extant treasures be attributable to her- 
etic or orthodox donors. The beautiful and 
varied series ordered for the chapel of the 

^ So called from Arius, a presbyter of the Church of Alex- 
andria in the fourth century. Having maintained that the Son 
and the Father were essentially distinct, and that the Son was 
created out of nothing by the will of the Father, Alexander, 
the Bishop, in opposition to whose preaching he broached this 
doctrine, called a council, in which the doctrine was condemned, 
and Arius and those who sided with him, excommunicated. 
He was, after much discussion, recalled from banishment by 
the Emperor Constantine, and was just about to be received 
again into the pale of the Church when he died suddenly. Of 
his writings only two epistles are extant; and though there is 
a sect called " Arians," its doctrines are far more modified and 
less startling than those held by Arius. 

254 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

archiepiscopal palace (c. 440) are still seen 
in preservation. Those in the basilica of St. 
Giovanni Evangelista, founded by Galla Pla- 
cidia in 425, have perished save a few insig- 
nificant fragments; another church, raised 
by that princess in 438, was almost rebuilt 
and classicized towards the end of the sev- 
enteenth century. The sixth-century mosaics 
in the now ruinous St. Michele were long 
ago sold and are, I believe, now at Berlin. 
When Ravenna Cathedral was rebuilt in its 
present rococo form in 1735, not only with 
almost total loss of its ancient artistic wealth, 
but without regard for the norma of the orig- 
inal in the new architecture, among other 
contents that perished were all the mosaics of 
the tribune and choir, ordered by an arch- 
bishop in 1 1 12, their subjects being the Res- 
urrection and the Ascension, the martyrdom 
of St. Apollinaris and the seventeen sainted 
prelates of the See. 

The most important of the Ravenna 
churches group themselves into the follow- 
ing classes and, as far as possible, should 
be visited in the order given. 

I. Churches belonging to the first age of 
the city, namely, to the time preceding the 
final overthrow of the Western Empire in 
255 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the Gothic conquest under Odoacer in 476: 
The Baptistery of the Cathedral; St. Gio- 
vanni Evangelista; Sta. Agata; St. Pietro 
Chrysologo (chapel in the Archbishop's pal- 
ace), SS. Nazario e Celso; St. Francesco. 

2. Churches of the second epoch, i. e., 
from 476 to the death of Theodoric the 
Arian in 526. St. Teodoro or St. Spirito; 
Sta. Maria in Cosmedin (formerly the Arian 
Baptistery) ; St. Apollinaris Nuovo; St. Vi- 
talis; St. Apollinaris in Classe. 

3. Churches erected from the death of 
Theodoric, through the existence of the Ex- 
archate to the decline of art: St. Domenico, 
Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori, Sta. Maria in 
Porto, the Cathedral and others, some of 
which are desecrated. 

Here then, within a circuit of about three 
miles, we have a most remarkable assemblage 
of religious edifices, almost the only remain- 
ing sign of this last stronghold of declining 
empire; this capital of the Gothic Italian 
kingdom; this seat of the feebly tyrannic 
Exarchate, long favoured by the munificent 
regards of Justinian and his orthodox succes- 
sors and eventually handed over to the Pa- 
pacy to become one of the most precious jew- 
els in the tiara. Fraught is Ravenna with 
256 



\ 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

romantic incident, contrasts and eventful vi- 
cissitude. Her ecclesiastical annals alone are 
so important as to suffice for an interesting 
chapter in Italian story; and her religious 
monuments are, of their description, unique, 
less impaired by modern interferences, and 
more impressively complete than those of 
Rome, whilst supplying the fullest illustra- 
tion of the ideas and genius that animated 
sacred art in the fifth and sixth centuries. 

Observing due chronological order in our 
studies, we will proceed first to the orthodox 
Baptistery, or Church of St. Giovanni Bat- 
tista, situated a little to the north of the large 
but uninteresting eighteenth-century Cathe- 
dral. To give as clear an idea as is possible 
of the form of this building, I must ask the 
reader to imagine a plain square with the 
corners rounded off^ rising seven and three- 
quarter metres from the ground, and at that 
height converted into a perfect octagon ter- 
minating in a low eight-sided pyramidal 
roof of tiles, and having at the spring of four 
alternate sides little half-domes also tiled, 
covering the summits of the angles of the 
squares, where they are cut off to form the 
upper octagon. These half-domes are the 
roofs of four internal niches. The interior 
257 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

line of the ground plan is, in fact, a perfect 
octagon, with large semicircular niches pro- 
jecting outwards from four alternate sides; 
but, by the concealment on the outside of the 
set-in, caused by the diameter of the niches 
being necessarily so much less than the width 
of the sides of the octagon from which they 
spring as was requisite to bring them within 
the original square, the outer line of the 
ground plan and the lower seven and three- 
quarter metres of the building externally 
preserve that form, with, as I have said, 
rounded angles. Earlier writers have de- 
scribed this Baptistery as an octagon with 
five continuous plain sides and two niches 
within the other three. So it appeared when 
they wrote. Two of the niches had been des- 
troyed, but, as distinct traces upon the walls 
show where they originally stood, they were 
carefully restored in 1866 in exact accord- 
ance with the others. The exterior of the 
building is quite plain, with the exception 
of very simple brick cornices below the lines 
of the side and central roofs, and on the 
upper part of each wall of the octagon a 
blind window, like a sunk panel, having a 
double-arched top without any central mul- 
lion. On the lower part of one of these pan- 
258 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

els a small antique marble bas-relief of a 
mariner on horseback, with the right hand 
extended, has been let in, but why or when 
there is nothing to show. 

While the sea-line had been further re- 
moved, the original formation of the soil had 
sunk until the ancient floor of the Baptistery 
was sixteen centimetres below the level of the 
low-water line, and buried under three me- 
tres of filling in, being thirty-five centimetres 
lower than the actual level of the streets 
around, which had been raised through ac- 
cumulation and other causes. On entering, 
the mass of mosaic work covering this bap- 
tistery from floor to ceiling presents a scene 
of glorious beauty. 

The earlier, dating from A. D. 430 and due 
to St. Neon, Bishop of Ravenna at that time,^ 
are those on the lower walls, where the 
prophets are represented on ovals of gold 
surrounded by green or gold scroll work. A 
little later are those in the cupola which in 
the Byzantine Church always absorbed the 
artist's highest powers. 

* As we learn from the following distich, forming part of a 
metrical epigraph inscribed round the arches: 

Magnanimus hunc namque Neon summusque sacerdos 
Excoluit pulchro componens omnia cultu. 

259 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Here we have for the central subject the 
Baptism of our Lord, a mosaic composition 
in which classic influences are still apparent. 
The principal figures have great dignity, be- 
yond the central group being seen the Jor- 
dan, personified as an aged man with long 
hair and beard, who seems floating on his 
stream like the river gods in antique sculp- 
ture. Below, carried round the domed com- 
partment, are the twelve Apostles, all exe- 
cuted on a blue ground. They are majestic 
figures, quite classically treated, in aspect 
(St. Peter excepted) almost youthful, vested 
either in a cloth of gold tunic and white pal- 
lium, or with the tunic white and the pal- 
lium golden, each wearing a high cap like a 
mitre, and carrying a leafy crown in one 
hand, that of St. Peter red, that of St. Paul 
gold (certainly no indication of inferiority 
in the latter to the former) . The Christ and 
St. John have pale, greenish-blue nimbi with 
a red outline. On a still lower compartment 
at the intervals between the arcades of a sort 
of triforium are alternated designs, also mo- 
saic, of a singularly symbolic character, con- 
sisting of altars or altar tombs, on each of 
which is laid a lily or a palm, and the four 
Gospels, each placed on a kind of suggestus 
260 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

with a richly embroidered cushion on which 
the Sacred Book lies open, just as it used to 
be exhibited in the midst of the church where 
the assemblies of the OEcumenical Councils 
were held. Thus we see here, in compendi- 
ous symbolism, the representation of those 
great comitia of the Church. 

In the centre of the building is the font, 
an octagonal bath, concerning which M. Isa- 
belle in his t^difices Circulaires offers the 
following remarks: 

" On y voit seulement, et c'est le premier 
example de cette disposition, une espece de 
niche avec un pupitre en marbre, en avant 
de laquelle sont deux marches de la meme 
matiere. Le pretre devait monter ces degres, 
et il se trouvait ainsi place de maniere a 
dominer un peu le neophyte, ou, comme le 
dit Ciampini, a baptiser plus facilement les 
enfants." 

There is no surrounding aisle to this bap- 
tistery such as we see in some later works of 
the same class, and its internal arrangement is 
worthy of particular notice, as we find in it 
a feature copied afterwards in the triforia 
of the basilican churches. 

The feature to which I allude is the 
arched panel, including three arched open- 
261 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ings separated by detached columns. This 
may be considered as one of the first instances 
of decoration in different planes, which man- 
ifestly led to the formation of tracery. 

This Baptistery at Ravenna is in all prob- 
ability one of the earliest of that still numer- 
ous race of buildings belonging to a period 
of the Church when great numbers of adult 
catechumens were baptized, and when im- 
mersion was the rule. In other parts of Eu- 
rope few baptisteries were built after the 
ninth century, but in Italy this adjunct was 
perpetuated into the thirteenth century, as 
witness such noble erections as those of Cre- 
mona, Florence, Lucca, Padua, Parma, Pisa 
and Pistoja. In later times these baptisteries 
were not infrequently converted into churches, 
as, for instance, at Asti. Some of them are 
of great size, and occasionally, as at Novara, 
were connected with the Cathedral by means 
of an atrium or colonnade surrounding a 
square. Others were so large that councils 
and synods were held in them. It was neces- 
sary to make such structures large, because 
in the Early Church it was customary for 
the bishop to baptize all the catechumens in 
his diocese (and so baptisteries are com- 
monly found attached to the cathedral, and 
262 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

not to parochial churches), and also because 
the rite was performed only thrice a year. 

During the months when there were no 
baptisms, the baptistery doors were sealed 
with the bishop's seal. From the records of 
early councils we find that these structures 
were first built and used to correct the evils 
arising from the practice of private baptism. 

As soon as Christianity made such progress 
that infant baptism became the rule, and as 
soon as immersion gave place to sprinkling, 
the ancient baptisteries were no longer neces- 
sary. They are still in general use, I believe, 
in Florence and Pisa. In the early period, 
while immersion continued to be the ordi- 
nary rite in the administration of the sacra- 
ment, the baptistery was furnished with a 
basin in the floor sufficiently capacious to 
admit of a certain number of converts at one 
time. When it became customary to baptize 
by effusion, the size of the basin was natu- 
rally diminished, and eventually it assumed 
the dimensions and the form which are now 
familiar to us in most of the medieval 
churches in Great Britain and upon the Con- 
tinent, and was placed in the church, either 
in a separate chapel or in some railed-ofif 
space. 

263 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

In Italy it frequently happens that the ca- 
thedral is the least interesting church in the 
city, architecturally considered. Those of 
Bologna, Cremona, Ferrara, Mantua, Padua 
and Pavia are instances in which either an 
entire rebuilding has taken place during the 
classical period, or where medieval work has 
been so shamelessly tortured into classical 
forms as to have lost all traces of antiquity. 

The Cathedral at Ravenna is, I regret to 
say, an instance of this drastic treatment. 
All that remains of the church founded by 
St. Ursus towards the close of the fourth cen- 
tury is the lofty cylindrical campanile,* 
which stands a little to the north-west and 
is compared to those of Oriental churches, 
the Cathedral itself having been entirely re- 
built in the uninteresting Italian style of 1733 
with a grandiose western fagade, a bare brick 
cruciform body and apsidal transepts. The 
whole is, in fact, only one of such structures 
the ecclesiologist encounters in this part of 
Europe usque ad nauseam? 

That the interior of Ravenna Cathedral is 
imposing from it ample dimensions it were 

* This is the prevailing form of the Ravennese campanile. 

* Eyesore as it is, it is wellnigh forgotten besides its own 
baptistery and campanile. 

264 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

idle to deny; but it will be quitted without 
much regret after a few antiques from the 
medieval cathedral have been viewed. One 
of these is the ivory throne of St. Maximi- 
anus, with the monogram of his name and 
title, " Episcopus." It shows various sacred 
reliefs, rude in design, but beautifully exe- 
cuted. In front is our Lord, of aged and se- 
vere aspect, giving benediction, while one 
hand holds a disc with the Lamb in relief 
upon it — a not very usual symbol for this 
subject. Beside Him are the Evangelists, 
each figure being under an arch. At the 
sides and back of the seat we find scenes from 
Gospel history and the life of the Patriarch 
Joseph.^ 

Parts of an ancient ambon of grey marble 
also remain imbedded in the wall of a pas- 
sage behind the apse. They show low reliefs 
of birds, fishes and animals in square figures, 
and the legend, " SERVUS XPI Agnellus 
episc. hunc pyrgum fecit," which would fix 
the middle of the sixth century as the date 
of its execution. 

Of about the same period is a silver pro- 
cessional cross also ascribed to St, Agnellus. 

^ A fine sepia coloured plate of this pulpit is given in Du» 
sommerard's hes Arts en Moyen Age. 

265 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

It is of the Greek form, measures six 
palms at each length, and is adorned with 
forty heads of saints in medallion relief. On 
one side at the junction of the arms is a 
larger relief of the Resurrection, of strange 
and quaint design, the figure rising with one 
foot out of a deep tomb and holding a ban- 
ner with the cross upon it. On the reverse 
side, similarly placed, is the Blessed Virgin, 
a veiled matronly figure in the act of prayer, 
but represented without the nimbus which is 
common to all the other saints. 

Among the latter are introduced bishops 
of Ravenna, and the form of the pallium 
worn by them led Ciampini to assign a some- 
what later origin for this beautiful cross than 
the time of St. Agnellus. 

The large two-bayed chapel opening out 
of the south transept contains two ancient 
tombs of marble with shallow reliefs upon 
them. Each is a shallow sarcophagus in 
form, standing on four low legs with semi- 
cylindrical top. One of them, the tomb of 
St. Raynold, has in front our Lord in maj- 
esty, with cruciferous nimbus, between two 
angels who are presenting wreaths. At the 
ends is the monogram XP between the letters 
AH. 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The other tomb, that of St. Barbatian, the 
confessor of Galla Placidia, is very similar. 
It has, however, a head of our Lord in a 
circular nimbus which is cruciform with a 
St. Andrew's cross, formed by the monogram 
XP being inscribed on the nimbus behind the 
head. The frequent device of two peacocks 
plucking at a wreath which surmounts the 
monogram XP may also be seen here. 

The dome of this chapel is frescoed with 
an Assumption, but the Cathedral generally 
is devoid of colour except what is struck by 
the pillars of very strongly veined grey mar- 
ble. In the aisles the marble of the pillars 
is almost white. 

The north transept contains Guido's pic- 
ture of the Gathering of the Manna, in- 
scribed, " Panem de coelo praestitisti illis 
omne delectamentum in se habentem." 

The mosaic floor is from the former edi- 
fice, and enclosed within the great west door 
are still preserved some fragments of its cele- 
brated Door of Vine-wood. The original 
planks are said to have been thirteen feet 
long and nearly one and a quarter wide, a 
proof that the ancients were right in stating 
that the statue of Diana of Ephesus was 
hewn from the vine-wood of Cyprus. The 
267 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

wood of the Ravenna doors was probably- 
imported from Constantinople. 

The archiepiscopal throne, surmounted by 
a white tester, stands in the centre of the apse 
behind the high altar. The credence table 
stands on the north side of the sanctuary. 
The two organ cases have sham pipes 
painted on the blinds which are ordinarily 
kept drawn over the tin ones. In the apse 
are large pictures representing scenes in the 
lives of SS. Severus, ApoUinaris, Peter 
Chrysologus and Ursus, four of the greatest 
of Ravenna's archbishops. 

Buonamici, in his Metro politana dt Ra- 
venna Architettura, published in 1768 and 
dedicated to Pope Benedict XIV, gives a 
large plate of the apse of the old cathedral, 
showing its mosaic decoration, which must 
have transcended those of the other churches 
in magnificence. In the semi-dome was the 
Resurrection, and below, between the win- 
dows, two subjects from the life of St. Apol- 
linaris and figures of St. Barbatian, the 
Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist and St. 
Ursus. In a frieze beneath were eighteen 
figures of sainted prelates of Ravenna, and 
in the roof the " Resurrection." 
Taking the monuments of Ravenna in due 
268 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

chronological order we leave the Cathedral 
and, threading the Strada del Duomo and 
the Strada Cavour, find ourselves standing 
before the church of St. Vitalis, a little to 
the east of which — in fact, within the same 
enclosure — we find SS. Nazario e Celso, 
constructed in the fifth century as a sepul- 
chral chapel for herself and family by the 
Empress Galla Placidia, who has left us in 
this little building one of the most interest- 
ing of yet existing basilicas. Its plan is that 
of a very short Latin cross, almost Greek in 
fact, and with all its decorations perfect ex- 
cept where the golden marble panelling 
from Numidia which covered the lower four 
feet of the walls was long since stripped off. 
Galla Placidia, whose early life was a 
tragic romance, governed the remains of the 
Western Empire after the death of Honorius 
during the minority of her son Valentinian 
III. With large resources at her disposal, 
and devoutly inclined, she was solicitous for 
the construction and decoration of churches 
both at Rome and Ravenna, and amongst the 
rest built this sepulchral chapel. Galla Pla- 
cidia died at Rome in 440, but her remains 
were conveyed to Ravenna and deposited in 



269 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the place which had been prepared for their 
reception. 

This building is very small, scarce forty 
feet in greatest length, cruciform, of the 
regular Latin proportions, and rises into a 
little dome at the intersection. The whole 
is vaulted in very massive masonry and beau- 
tifully encrusted with marbles and mosaics 
in that Arabico-Byzantine style which first 
found its way into Italy from the Sicilian 
shores. 

SS. Nazario e Celso was built to contain 
three heavy sarcophagi, for which there is 
just room in the three smaller arms of the 
cross; and the Christian symbols with which 
they are sculptured — lambs, doves drink- 
ing from vases, fruit-bearing palms, the four 
rivers of Paradise, fountains and the sacred 
monogram — entitle these sarcophagi to rank 
among objects of sacred art. These have 
never been disturbed, and are the only tombs 
which remain in their places of the whole 
line of Caesars, whether Eastern or Western. 
The Empress herself was interred in the im- 
mense marble sarcophagus behind the single 
altar of diaphanous Oriental alabaster. Her 
body was preserved in full dress, sitting up- 
right in a chair of cypress wood, down to 
270 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

1577, when it was unfortunately consumed 
through the mischief of some children who 
inserted a taper into the aperture, and thus, 
the rich vestments taking fire, was this 
unique relic of imperial pomp in death re- 
duced to a heap of ashes, no more even in 
this condition visible, as the orifice has been 
closed ever since. 

The altar, to which I have already al- 
luded, stands under the cupola. It is of the 
usual height and proportions, rather short, 
and is raised upon a single step or foot-pace. 
The front is rudely sculptured with a cross, 
a lamb and a dove in basso-rilievo. On the 
altar is a small predella to carry the candle- 
sticks. Whether this forms part of the orig- 
inal altar is doubtful, but the whole is a fair 
specimen of an altar in its ancient state. 

Ravenna under the Greek exarchs became 
more Byzantine than Byzantium itself. It 
certainly possesses a finer series of ecclesias- 
tical edifices than the capital of the Eastern 
Empire, and, as regards internal decoration, 
more interesting than those of Rome. That 
of the little building now under review is 
among the loveliest gems of the mosaic art 
whether at Ravenna or elsewhere. 

The upper portions of the walls and the 
271 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

vaulted ceilings are covered with the richest 
mosaics, scarcely, if anything, inferior to the 
Prophets in the Baptistery, and infinitely 
finer than the decoration of the dome. The 
works here afiford abundant evidence of the 
great vitality still existing in pictorial art 
even at that late period, and of what was the 
spirit of the Christianity of that time. Like 
those in the Baptistery, the mosaics in this 
mausoleum are evidently separate produc- 
tions by different distinguished artists be- 
longing to one school, but each leaving the 
mark of his individual style upon his work. 
The Prophets in the Baptistery are probably 
by one master, but in the mausoleum the 
work of four if not five different artists can 
be traced. The lower portion of the walls 
was, as I have remarked, originally panelled 
with the golden yellow marble of Numidia, 
which has disappeared, but from the height 
of about six feet the interior is completely 
covered with mosaic in every part. In the 
lunette at the summit of the wall at the foot 
of the cross is a picture of the Good Shep- 
herd. In every sense it is a remarkable 
work, rivalling in drawing and beauty of 
composition the best wall paintings found at 
Pompeii. It may, with a fair degree of 
272 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

probability, be considered the earliest pic- 
torial representation of our Blessed Lord, 
and marks distinctly the religious develop- 
ment or change which, at the time when the 
Pagan religion was still a living creed, un- 
consciously influenced the artist to merge and 
lose the milder glories of Apollo in his repre- 
sentation of the divinity of the Son of Man. 
At first sight this picture in the mausoleum 
at Ravenna looks like a lovely rendering of 
the youthful Apollo or of Orpheus, but it is 
only necessary to dismiss all classic recollec- 
tions to recognize nothing but the art pro- 
duction of a mind fully impressed with the 
inexhaustible love of the Good Shepherd for 
His sheep. Our Lord here is represented 
seated in a grass-grown, rocky landscape, in 
a slightly reclining posture, with the feet ex- 
tended forward, and one negligently thrown 
over the other. His right hand, extended 
downwards by His side, caresses one of the 
six sheep grouped about Him, and His left, 
raised upwards, rests upon a crux hastata of 
gold, with one crossbar above, and two close 
together near the foot. He is draped in a 
long vesture of gold with loose sleeves, of 
which the left has fallen back, leaving the 
raised arm bare. 

273 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Over the left shoulder hang the folds of a 
light chlamys of rich purple, which passing 
behind the figure, crosses the lap above the 
knees and falls on the left side. The colour- 
ing of the cloth-of-gold tunic is most skil- 
fully rendered. It has the semi-transparent 
effect of a kind of golden gauze, and the 
diaphanous shadings of the light folds is ad- 
mirable. Down the length of the tunic, from 
the shoulder to the ground, are two lines of 
blue. On the feet are black sandals tied with 
bows above the instep. The face is that of a 
beautiful beardless youth, with auburn hair 
falling on the shoulders, and around the head 
is a plain gold nimbus. Anything more clas- 
sic in art, imbued with the deepest sentiment 
of the Christian religion, it would be difficult 
to imagine. 

Entirely in a dififerent style is the picture 
at the opposite extremity of the mausoleum. 
The centre is occupied by a great gridiron 
above a flaming fire. 

On the right, advancing with energetic 
stride towards it, is St. Lawrence, his dra- 
pery floating behind him in the wind, and on 
his shoulder he carries a long slender cross, 
lance fashion. To the left is what looks like 
an open cupboard, on the two shelves of 
274 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

which lie four volumes bound in red, each 
bearing the name of one of the Evangelists. 
This picture is the work of an artist whose 
bold, vigorous and somewhat crude touch is 
essentially different from the exquisitely deli- 
cate finish which evidently constituted the 
characteristic of the works of the author of 
the Good Shepherd; and as distinctly differ- 
ent from these is the no less masterly style 
of the harts at the water brook. 

By another hand again are the eight fig- 
ures — one on each side of the windows in 
the four walls above the arches supporting 
the dome. They are full of action, admi- 
rably posed, and bear resemblance to the 
Prophets in the Baptistery, but are inferior 
to them. 

Below each window is a vase, with doves 
perched on the rim and drinking, noticeable 
from the resemblance they bear to the cele- 
brated antique mosaic known as " Pliny's 
Doves." 

Space precludes me from descanting upon 
the exquisite wreaths of fruit, the orna- 
mented surface of the vaulted ceilings and 
the variety of detail which adorn and frame 
these pictures. The whole is set in a rich 
background of deep blue, which makes that 
275 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

colour, intermingled with gold, the prevail- 
ing tone of the whole, culminating in the 
dome, where circles of stars, gradually in- 
creasing in size, blend as it were into each 
other, through their long thin rays, like those 
flashing from the planets, touching until they 
enclose a Latin cross at the summit. 

The solemnity of this little church of SS. 
Nazario e Celso is beyond description, built 
by a woman, the strange vicissitudes of whose 
chequered career add another tragic chapter 
to the story of the declining Empire, which 
would, in her case, be more pathetic were we 
allowed to ascribe any attributes of moral 
elevation to her character. Alternately ex- 
alted and degraded, she lived to be a Gothic 
Queen, a Roman Empress, twice a captive 
in barbarian armies, and once driven on foot 
amidst the common herd before the car of 
the Gothic usurper, her first husband's mur- 
derer. 

She does not appear to have been deficient 
in talent to subjugate the will of her two 
husbands and her feeble brother, Honorius, 
or in that sort of demonstrative piety then 
fashionable at the imperial court; but her 
conduct in consenting to the unjust execution 
of her unfortunate cousin, Serena, widow of 
276 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Stilicho, during the siege of Rome by Alaric 
shows Galla Placidia in a repulsive light, 
cruel in her lenity. 

There is a curious legend in connection 
with Galla Placidia which I will relate to 
the reader as we walk towards St. Giovanni 
Evangelista, another church founded by that 
lady, and situated in the prosaic vicinity of 
the railway station. The princess and her 
suite were on a voyage from Constantinople 
to Ravenna, when a great tempest overtook 
their vessels. In the extreme of peril Pla- 
cidia called on all to direct their prayer and 
trust to the beloved Apostle, vowing a splen- 
did church to be dedicated to him should 
they reach Ravenna in safety. Presently ap- 
peared the visible assurance of his protec- 
tion, for St. John the Evangelist was seen 
by all, on each ship, performing the task of 
the paralyzed mariners, and thus steering 
them safe to port. Mindful of her vow, Pla- 
cidia ordered works to begin for construct- 
ing one of the finest churches yet seen in 
Ravenna. The richest marbles were brought 
from various quarries, mosaics were executed 
for apse and " arch of triumph " represent- 
ing the tempest and vision at sea, also the 
subject from the Apocalypse of the Saviour 
277 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

giving a book to the Apostle and desiring 
him to eat it; and the tesselated pavement 
was disposed so as to imitate, in wavy lines 
of marble, the tossing sea-waves. 

But Placidia was in grief, seeing she could 
not hope to obtain any sort of relic of St. 
John for her church's last consecration; so 
her confessor, St. Barbatian, advised her to 
persist in prayer and fasting, with the trust 
that her great desire might in some measure 
be fulfilled. He kept vigil with her himself, 
night after night, in the same church; and 
at last, when both had fallen asleep after 
long watching, the confessor saw a majestic 
personage in long white vestments, who stood 
offering incense at the altar. He woke Pla- 
cidia to point out that vision which she also 
beheld, and straightway rushing to the altar, 
the princess threw herself at the feet of the 
mysterious figure, seized his right foot, and 
so firmly, that the sandal was left in her 
hand, when St. John the Evangelist, for he 
it indeed was, vanished the moment mortal 
form had touched his form, now become im- 
mortal. Next day in presence of the Em- 
peror, the Archbishop and St. Barbatian, 
Placidia offered this inestimable relic at the 
altar, and then had it immuned in a secret 
278 



RAVENNA 

St. Giovanni Evan^elista 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

place within this building where none should 
be able to find it. 

And here in the tympanum of the exqui- 
sitely beautiful Giotto-like portal which ad- 
mits to the cortile in front of the church, we 
see sculptured the apparition of the Apostle 
attended by angels at the altar, while Pla- 
cidia kneels to touch his foot. 

Two reliefs within the gable represent the 
offering or enshrining of the holy sandal by 
the princess, while between them seated fig- 
ures of the Emperor and a mitred prelate 
are introduced, above them being a half- 
length figure of our Lord, who looks down 
upon the group below from a species of 
tabernacle. The spandrels formed by the 
arch of this doorway and the lintel of the 
gable illustrate the Annunciation. 

No description can do justice to this door- 
way, a rara avis in Ravenna, with its variety 
of mouldings and exquisite leafage. 

The basilica in the rear of this graceful 
conception now contains little of the splen- 
dour and scarcely a remnant of the mosaic 
decoration with which Galla Placidia so 
richly endowed it, and upon which the old 
chroniclers have so enthusiastically des- 
canted, having been entirely rebuilt, but with 
279 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the preservation of its colonnades of beauti- 
fully veined higio antico, a dark grey marble, 
w^hich in the cross views of the interior as- 
sume the most elegant attitudes. The capi- 
tals are Corinthian, and have as usual in 
Ravenna the superimposed capitals* in- 
scribed with crosses. All above the arches 
is poor, feeble work of pseudo-classical char- 
acter. 

To the apse, which is very small and con- 
tains the stalls of the Sisters attached to the 
contiguous hospital, is an ascent of thirteen 
steps, and beneath the high altar repose the 
remains of the martyrs, SS. Cangius, Can- 
gianus and Cangianilla. 

The church retains, however, some ves- 
tiges of antiquity. One is a great column 
with a nobly foliaged capital of Venetian 
type built into the wall at the south-west 
corner of the nave and belonging to an older 
church. The pavement around this pillar 
has been taken up, and its lower part, sur- 
rounded by water at a depth of five feet be- 
low the present flooring of the church, ex- 
posed. 

Another is the original high altar with its 

* In strict architectural nomenclature this additional capital 
is styled " dosseret." 

280 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

confessionary, a rich and beautiful work in 
Greek marble, porphyry and serpentine of 
the fifth century. 

Some fragments of the ancient decorations 
are extant in a mosaic, representing the vow 
of Galla Placidia, at the east end of the north 
aisle, and in some frescoes on the vault of the 
fourth chapel in the south aisle, ascribed to 
Giotto, and representing the four Evangelists 
with their symbols and the four Latin doc- 
tors. 

The square pulpit, supported on four Tus- 
can columns of veined marble, is one of the 
most pleasing of the instrumenta. 

Externally the appearance of St. Giovanni 
Evangelista is rude, but the square south- 
western campanile, crowned by a tiled spire, 
has a graceful contour in the different views 
of the city. 

Sta. Agata Maggiore (St. Agatha the 
Great) is a good, but not large, example of 
its period. It was built about A. D. 400 by 
the Bishop Exuperantius, and, although de- 
ficient in mural decoration, is one of the 
most charming of the Ravennese basilicas, 
having undergone a careful restoration 
which has purged it of much tawdry rococo 
work. 

281 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The nave, which has in all eleven bays, is 
divided from its aisles by an arcade sup- 
ported on columns of varied material, such 
as granite, bigio antico, cipollino and other 
marbles for which the Italians have so ex- 
tensive a nomenclature. The foliaging of 
the capitals hesitates between the classic and 
the Byzantine variety of Corinthian, and in- 
stead of the square abacus, the cap is sur- 
mounted by that Ravennese peculiarity, the 
impost, sculptured with the cross. The last 
arch on either side dies off into the wall in 
lieu of being brought down on to the capital 
of a half-pillar. 

Mr. R. Phene Spiers, in his Architecture 
East and West, is of opinion that many of 
these capitals in Sta. Agata belong to the 
sixth century, and were not carved for the 
church, whilst others are barbarous copies 
of eighth- or ninth-century work. The 
arches of the original church were carried 
on piers instead of columns. In Rome, 
where the architects had abundant resources, 
they were enabled to take the columns from 
ancient buildings, but in Ravenna they were 
forced to content themselves with piers, un- 
less, as in St. Vitale, St. Apollinaris Nuovo 
and St. Apollinaris in Classe, they were 
282 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

privileged by the Greek Emperor to obtain 
them from the Greek quarries. 

Square piers, however, were much in the 
way, so that, probably in the ninth century, 
when there seems to have been a revival 
in church building in the North of Italy, 
Sta. Agata was partially rebuilt and with 
materials from more ancient structures. 

Excavations have revealed the fact that 
the original floor of the fifth-century church, 
laid with cubes of mosaic half-inch square, 
has been found at a depth of eight feet below 
the present church, which is on the same 
level as the street, so that, allowing two feet 
for the steps entering the original church, 
the street has risen ten feet between the fifth 
and the present century. 

The roof of the nave is a low gabled open 
one of wood, with the beams placed close 
together; roofs of the lean-to type cover the 
aisles. 

The apse, which joins the nave without 
any intervening bay, dates from the latter 
part of the seventeenth century, the original 
one, together with the mosaics which 
adorned it, having been destroyed by an 
earthquake in 1688. 

Perhaps the most striking constructional 
283 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

feature in Sta. Agata is its internal narthcx, 
one not only interesting as being unique, I 
believe, in Ravenna, but admirable from the 
manner in which it imparts an appearance 
of greater length to the interior. 

This narthex is formed by separating the 
first two arcades on either side from the re- 
maining nine by a pier instead of a column. 
Against this pier is placed a plain massive 
square half-column supporting an arch which 
spans the church transversely at the same 
height as that opening into the apse. The 
effect of this division is very striking indeed. 

Within one of the arcades on the south 
side of the nave of Sta. Agata stands a most 
interesting and elegant oval-shaped ambon 
of cipollino marble, mounted upon a plain 
base and with its sides ornamented by con- 
cave arcades. These ambons, of which there 
are several in the Ravenna churches, seem to 
have had no permanent steps to reach them, 
being approached in all probability by tem- 
porary wooden ones, an aperture being made 
large enough for the reader or preacher to 
enter. There are two apertures in this ambon 
at Sta. Agata, which is in all probability the 
hollowed out section of a huge fluted col- 
umn. 

284 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The front of the high altar is enriched 
with carving. There is a Latin cross in the 
centre intersected at the junction of the arms 
by one of the St. Andrew's shape. 

On either side is sculptured a bird, a pea- 
cock presumably, and above is a band of 
gracefully foliaged ornament. 

Behind the altar, and following the sweep 
of the apse, are some very good Renaissance 
stalls. The altar of the south chapel contains 
the bodies of St. Sergius, martyr, and St. 
Agnellus, archbishop, and bears the two 
monograms of Sergius Diaconus. 

The very curious ancient chapel in the 
archbishop's palace, attributed to the time of 
St. Peter Chrysologus, should by no means 
be overlooked, containing as it does some of 
the noblest among specimens of fifth-century 
art at Ravenna. They expand above the 
marble incrustation round the lower part of 
the building, which comprises a small square 
nave with intersecting cylindrical vaults 
opening into a small chancel also cylin- 
drically vaulted by an arch with deep in- 
trados. The effect in this little building pro- 
duced by the mosaic decoration is one of 
great gorgeousness allied with an austere and 
unworldly beauty. The brilliant hues of the 
285 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

mosaic are as unfaded as the quaint and 
massive architecture is intact, since the days 
when the emperors of a ruined State rifled 
away their fear-stricken lives at Ravenna. 

The most remarkable feature in these pic- 
tures is the representation of our Lord at 
different ages. In one place we see Him as 
a young boy; in another as a youth of 
eighteen with the same benignly beautiful 
features more developed; in a third as a 
fully matured man, costumed like a Greek 
emperor in gold and purple, bearing in one 
hand a long red cross, and in the other an 
open book inscribed Kgo sum Via, Veritas et 
Vita. 

Then there are four majestic-looking 
a;igels in long white vestments with solemn 
countenances expressing a kind of awful joy, 
and supporting on their uplifted arms the 
labarum within an aureole, and numerous 
other figures and heads of apostles and saints, 
all characterized by general sameness of 
type; eyes large and staring, forehead low 
and flat, lips full and curling; the female 
heads all veiled, but with rich coiffure, 
braided hair in sight, except one, St. Felici- 
tas, who has the head-dress of a religious. 
Over the altar, which is at the extreme east 
286 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

end, is a mosaic of the Blessed Virgin with 
expanded arms and in act of prayer. The 
head is closely veiled, the robes are ample 
and of purple, and the aspect is one of ma- 
tronly maturity, severe yet modest. It is a 
figure of the interceding mother or rather 
the personified Church, not that of the heav- 
enly Queen who herself demands worship. 
This picture came from the Cathedral when 
it was rebuilt in the eighteenth century. It 
is of the twelfth century, and the only mosaic 
here of later date than the rest. 

The Basilica of St. Francesco was dedi- 
cated, on its completion during the first half 
of the fifth century, to St. Peter, the change 
in its name taking place in 1251 when the 
Franciscan Order came into possession of it. 

Although this church passed through 
the revived classical period without loss of 
much that is essential to the early basilican 
style, it has little to recommend it beyond its 
spacious imposing interior with three apses 
corresponding to the nave and aisles, its 
eleven arches carried on Corinthian columns 
of grey marble, and its finely proportioned 
campanile, a curious mingling of the Lom- 
bard and Roman types and built of the dark- 
est brick, like that at St. Albans. It pro- 
287 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

jects into the aisle at the south-west corner, 
leaving just a little space between its wall 
and the two most westerly bays of the nave. 
The pseudo-Renaissance high attics and 
sham vaulting, which, by the way, is crack- 
ing in all directions, mask that simple frieze 
and open wooden roof which are assumed 
to be the primitive form of basilican cover- 
ing. It is to be hoped that this wretched 
work may ere long be removed, and the 
upper parts of this nobly proportioned 
church restored in all their early simplicity. 

The holy water stoups in St. Francesco 
have a large marble globe placed in their 
middle on a pedestal, which in many other 
instances I found surmounted by a figure or 
a representation of our Lord's Baptism. 

There are two rows of stalls behind the 
choir and an organ on each side. An in- 
scription here informs us that the anniversary 
of the consecration of this church is observed 
on February 22. 

At the east end of the south aisle is an 
ancient altar, panelled in front with five ar- 
cades and covering the dust of Archbishop 
Liberius II. These have shell-shaped half- 
domes, twisted pillarets and gracefully draped 
figures, of which the central one is repre- 
288 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

sented seated in a curule chair. There are 
likewise two niched effigies at the north and 
south sides. 

This church is remarkable for its medieval 
tombs, of which that on either side of the 
west door is a good example. One has the 
recumbent figure in bas-relief of Ostosio da 
Polenta, Count of Ravenna (died 1386), and 
vested as a mendicant friar. The head is 
singularly beautiful. Perhaps the greatest 
lustre is shed around St. Francesco as the 
church in which Dante was originally in- 
terred. His remains are no longer here, but 
repose in a mausoleum leaning against the 
lateral wall of the church though quite dis- 
tinct in architecture. Originally built in 
1492, it was feebly restored two hundred 
years later. 

We now pass on to the churches of the 
Ostro-Gothic period, built between 489 and 
526 during the glorious and prosperous reign 
of Theodoric, which gave the first example 
of enlightened and temporary popular for- 
eign domination in Italy. Like his ancestors 
of the royal Gothic race of the Amali, The- 
odoric was an Arian, but indifferent to con- 
troversy, and never violated the peace or 
privileges of the Catholic Church. The par- 
289 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ticulars of the government of this memorable 
prince, who shed a short-lived lustre on the 
Gothic name, are recorded in twelve books 
by his secretary, the senator Cassiodorus, a 
man of learning, who induced his illiterate 
master to become a patron of art and litera- 
ture. Towards the close of his reign an in- 
tolerant edict of the Byzantine court against 
the Arians in his dominions induced this 
prince, against his usual policy to meditate 
a retaliation against the orthodox of Italy, 
which, however, was frustrated by his death. 
It is to be lamented that an act of tyranny 
against two exemplary characters, Boetius 
and Symmachus, his father-in-law, closed his 
career. These senators were both arbitrarily 
put to death on the mere suspicion of an in- 
trigue between a senatorial party and the 
imperial court. 

No sooner had this cruel act been perpe- 
trated than Theodoric was seized with re- 
morse, and a fever ensued which terminated 
his existence in three days, leaving his scep- 
tre in the hands of a feeble boy, directed 
indeed by an able and high-minded woman, 
Amalasuntha, Theodoric's widowed daugh- 
ter, who was ungratefully betrayed and put 
to death by her cousin Theodatus, called by 
290 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

herself to the throne left vacant by the pre- 
mature death of her son Athalaric. Ravenna 
was the ordinary residence of Theodoric, and 
the fagade of what must have been a most 
sumptuous palace is still to be seen adjacent 
to St. Apollinaris Nuovo, the most noble of 
the many noble churches founded by the 
prince in his capital of the Romagna. 

Amalasuntha is said to have raised the 
mausoleum of Theodoric, which, like those 
of SS. Helena and Constantia at Rome, was 
at some medieval period dedicated as a 
church, having successively borne the names 
of Sta. Maria in Memoriam Regis, of Sta. 
Maria ad Farina and Sta, Maria Rotonda, 
but it has been ascertained to have been built 
during the lifetime of that monarch. 

Few of the monuments of Ravenna are 
invested with a greater solemnity than this 
singular mausoleum of Theodoric. Rising 
among woods at a short distance from the 
city on its north-eastern side, where a sylvan 
scene of quiet loveliness environs this monu- 
ment of eventful story and perished nation- 
ality, it is now left to silent solitude, having 
been long since robbed of the sarcophagus in 
which Greek bigotry would not grant the 
repose of the tomb to an Arian sovereign. 
291 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The very contradictory of such a system 
of construction as prevails in St. Vitalis, this 
mausoleum is a circular — or rather a polyg- 
onal with the effect of being a circular — 
structure of marble. It consists of a very 
solid cruciform vault in the basement, into 
which the sea-water has access. 

Above this rises the polygonal portion, at 
each of whose ten sides opens a deep recess 
under a semicircular arch. This portion, 
reached by two outer staircases, added in 
1780, is surrounded by a vaulted gallery 
which was — for it is no longer existing — 
completely external to the main chamber and 
only entered from it by two or three open- 
ings. The drum of the dome that covers the 
centre is lighted by a row of small windows 
between a simple band and cornice. The 
dome itself is of one single, solid mass of 
Istrian stone, hollowed out and cut exter- 
nally into a bold convex, having massive 
stone handles hollowed under, by means of 
which it was raised to its position. 

Against the outer surface of each of these 
stood, it is said, the image of one of the 
Apostles. There is no trace of them now, 
the vault of the surrounding gallery having 
been destroyed. 

292 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

What is most curious about this enormous 
mass of stone, weighing 2,28o,ooolb. in its 
rough state, and 940,0001b. at the present 
time, is that it must have been the first stone 
of the building. It is quite inconceivable 
that, after the raising of the walls to the 
requisite height, such a mass could have been 
first raised and then moved by machinery- 
wide enough to embrace the building and 
drop its roof upon it. The only reasonable 
explanation of it is that the stone was raised 
and held aloft by scaffolding until the walls 
rose and received it. 

As a tour de force it is a wonderful testi- 
mony to the energy and vigour of Theodoric 
the Goth, who had it made to support the 
porphyry sarcophagus he was buried in, 
which may now be seen attached to the front 
of his palace as above mentioned. 

Of the Ravennese monuments raised under 
the auspices of Theodoric, let us take the 
first, the Arian Baptistery, situated a little 
to the west of the Church of St. Spirito, 
which lies to the western side of the Corso 
Garibaldi, turning to the right on leaving 
the open space before the railway station. 

This structure, now known as Sta. Maria 
in Cosmedin, is circular within, octagonal 
293 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

without. From one of the eight sides pro- 
jects a small round-ended apse, while another 
has a loggia of three arches. The building 
is entirely without mouldings but gorgeous 
with mosaics, which were not added until 
after the reconstruction of the edifice by the 
Catholics. From the close resemblance in 
the style, arrangement and detail of the mo- 
saics in the dome of this baptistery and of 
those in the upper part of the dome of the 
Orthodox Baptistery, one would opine that 
they belonged to the same period. It is pos- 
sible that the upper mosaics in the Orthodox 
Baptistery may have been injured during the 
religious contests between the Arians and the 
Catholics, or they may have been altered 
during the Arian domination, and, when the 
Arian Baptistery was reconsecrated and re- 
decorated in accordance with Catholic doc- 
trines after the death of Theodoric, the orna- 
mentation of both domes may have been en- 
trusted to the same master. One thing is cer- 
tain, they are identical in style. 

The mosaics in the Arian Baptistery are 
divided into zones. In the lower are the 
twelve Apostles, disproportionately lengthy 
figures, divided from each other by conven- 
tional palm trees instead of tall acanthus 
294 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

stalks. They are advancing carrying crowns, 
and they surround a representation of the 
Baptism in the Jordan — if anything slightly 
superior to that in the Orthodox Baptistery. 
The nude figure of our Lord is standing up 
to the middle in the water, His hands ex- 
tended into it, and His lower limbs seen 
through it; and at the side is a mythological 
representation of the river deity. Instead of 
a lower zone, divided into compartments, 
containing thrones and tables supporting the 
Gospels, which the size of the Arian dome 
does not permit, the zone containing the 
Apostles has a thirteenth compartment in 
which there is a throne — exactly the same 
as those in the Orthodox Baptistery — hav- 
ing a rich cushion on the seat and upon it 
a jewelled cross. 

The neighbouring Church of St. Spirito 
alias St. Teodoro, a small but tastefully re- 
stored basilica of sombre aspect, stands a lit- 
tle to the east of the Arian Baptistery, and is 
one of the churches built in Ravenna for that 
sect under the auspices of Theodoric. It as- 
sumed the name of St. Teodoro after its con- 
secration to the Catholic worship of St. Ag- 
nellus, and afterwards took its present dedi- 
cation. 

295 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Spirito has all the basilican character- 
istics, viz., two graceful ranges of eight 
arches on columns of varied marbles, with 
composite capitals and cross-inscribed entab- 
lature, and their bases exposed; a series of 
small, round-headed windows in the clere- 
story between which and the arcades is a belt 
of paintings — heads within circles; a roof 
of wood, flat and panelled; an apse whose 
conch is richly decorated with a figure of 
our Lord seated between two saints, beyond 
whom on either side are three sheep; and 
an ancient pulpit or ambon of marble, small 
and with bulging sides. 

There is a western loggia of five arcades 
with a lean-to roof, and over the west doors 
are these inscriptions: " Spiritum nolite ex- 
tinguere"; "Nolite contristari Spiritum"; 
and " Implemini Spiritu sancto." 

I attended some devotions in this little 
church on one of the evenings during my 
stay in Ravenna, when the singing, to the 
accompaniment of a feeble little organ in 
the west gallery which completely broke 
down on the performer's essaying some Mo- 
zart-like runs, was very harsh and disagree- 
able. Let us hope that the hearts of the con- 
gregation at St. Spirito, almost entirely com- 
296 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

posed of the poor, were the best and most 
musical performers. 

St. Apollinaris Nuovo, whose mosaic dec- 
oration is pronounced by critics one of the 
finest examples of the early Christian school 
in Italy, was originally built by Theodoric 
as an Arian cathedral. It was consecrated 
for Catholic worship by Archbishop St. Ag- 
nellus at the close of the Gothic kingdom 
and dedicated to St. Martin. It was also 
called St. Martino in Coelo Aureo on ac- 
count of its magnificent decorations, and Sa- 
cellum Arii from its original destination. 
The present dedication was conferred upon it 
in the ninth century from the report that the 
body of St. Apollinaris had been transferred 
within its walls in order to secure it in its 
real resting-place at Classe from the attacks 
of the Saracens. 

It is a basilica 315 feet long, terminating 
in an apse separated from the nave by a 
rather deep, aisleless limb, which approaches 
more nearly to the later chancel than any- 
thing else I know of so early a date. Un- 
fortunately the whole of the eastern limb of 
the church was rebuilt in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and the mosaics, from whose golden 
backgrounds the church derived its appella- 
297 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tion, St. Martino in Coelo Aureo, were des- 
troyed. 

Tawdry red and blue hangings edged with 
silver concealed the apse from view on the 
occasion of my visit, which was the festival 
of St. Anthony of Padua, whose especial at- 
tribute seemed to be the white lily, quantities 
of which were being purchased outside the 
basilica, which they filled with their per- 
fume, obviating to a considerable extent the 
damp, earthy smell that pervades almost all 
these old Ravenna churches. 

The nave of St. ApoUinaris Nuovo is its 
noblest part: it is comparatively unaltered 
and retains its roof, which is flat and cof- 
fered, unlike those of the generality of the 
churches in Ravenna, where it is open and 
of a low-pitched gable form. 

The arches separating the nave from its 
aisles are supported on ancient monolithic 
columns, each of which has above the capital 
proper an additional one inscribed with a 
cross. The floor of the church has been so 
much raised that the bases of the columns are 
hidden eighteen inches below the pavement, 
considerably to the detriment of the general 
effect of the elevation, as are the nondescript 
chapels opening from the north aisle. 
298 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Within the eighth bay counting from the 
east is an ancient marble ambon on five 
shafts, which like that in Sta. Agata has no 
steps/ A wooden door has been inserted 
into the aperture on the western side. 

The glory of St. ApoUinaris Nuovo is the 
mosaic decoration, not only of the frieze 
between the arcades and the clerestory on 
either side of the nave, but the wall spaces 
between and above the windows, all of which 
taken in conjunction with the coffered ceil- 
ing presents a specimen of early Christian 
iconography doubly interesting from the al- 
most entirely unaltered condition in which 
it has come down to us. The triforium belt 
on either side is enriched with a processional 
treatment which struck the keynote for Hip- 
polyte Flandrin^s remarkable work in the 
Church of St. Vincent de Paul at Paris. 

On the north is represented the neighbour- 
ing town of Classis, whence issues a proces- 
sion of twenty-two virgins bearing crowns 
and advancing towards the Blessed Virgin 
enthroned with the Infant Christ in her lap, 
and between whom and the virgins are the 

^ I am inclined to believe that these pulpits in the Ravenna 
churches are formed out of the ambons orginally included in 
the cancelli. 

299 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

three Magi hurrying forward to present their 
gifts. 

On the opposite wall is a procession of 
twenty-six male saints, passing from the 
Palatium, where the Redeemer, draped only 
in the imperial purple, as in the apse of St. 
Vitalis, is enthroned between angels, two on 
each side. 

While there is much sentiment about the 
female figures particularly, there is a poverty 
of design in the sameness of their attitudes, 
additionally revealed by the obvious effort 
made to vary them. The proportions, how- 
ever, are just, and though the drawing is 
tame it can scarcely be called stiff. 

Between the young faces of the virgins 
there is a more or less general resemblance, 
but the attempt to give expression to the gen- 
eral characters has been more successful in 
the men, where the difference of ages and 
the arrangement of the hair and beard af- 
forded more scope for the artist. 

There is, however, a very marked differ- 
ence in point of art between the Virgin en- 
throned and the saints who are approach- 
ing her. Her figure is disproportionately 
lengthy, the head very small, the eyes round 
and staring, and the hands and feet gro- 
300 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tesquely small, all peculiarities belonging to 
so much later a period as to suggest the 
strong probability of that figure being a 
restoration made at the time when the Basil- 
ica was rededicated to St. ApoUinaris in 
856. 

A not very judicious reparation of these 
mosaics took place during the early 'sixties 
of the last century, when the sceptre, orig- 
inally held by our Lord, was changed to an 
open book. The colour of the new gold is 
as unsatisfactory as we generally find it in 
modern work. 

Throughout these works at St. ApoUinaris 
the colour scheme is very beautiful. The 
upper robes of the virgins are gold, with red 
and green spots of ornaments; their dress- 
ings white with grey shading; and their 
shoes red. Above these processions occur the 
Apostles, in white, on a gold ground, placed 
between the round-headed windows of the 
clerestory, which unfortunately retain their 
miserable nondescript glazing in small panes. 
Over these figures again are scenes from the 
Life of Christ in small oblong compartments. 
It is curious to observe in these Ravennese 
mosaics that our Lord is only represented 
with a beard in the later events depicted. 
301 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

No Crucifixion scene is shown ; it was a sub- 
ject to be abhorred. 

Another detail observable in these decora- 
tions, not only at St. Apollinaris but in the 
other churches^ has yet to be explained. On 
the corners of the mantles worn by the male 
figures, whether those of our Lord or of 
prophets, Apostles or saints^ are signs of 
three or four inches in length. Some re- 
semble the capital letters H.N.C.T.R.O., but 
the most common forms are like the letter I, 
and in the shape of a two-sided mason's 
square, and this sign is on every corner of 
the cloths which cover the tables in the pic- 
tures of Melchisedec in St. Vitalis and St. 
Apollinaris in Classe. On the drapery of the 
figures of the Saviour these signs are made 
in gold, and on those of the others in black. 
The portrait of Justinian which occurs in the 
last chapel on the north was formerly outside 
the portal. 

St. Vitalis, the most complicated and at the 
same time perhaps the most beautiful of the 
circular churches of its age, was founded in 
526 by Bishop Ecclesius, after a journey 
which he took to Constantinople with Pope 
John I. Authorities seem divided as to what 



302 



RAVENNA 

St. Vitalis 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

was the original motif for this structure, but 
it would appear to be a fusion of western 
and Oriental ideas as exemplified in the 
temple of Minerva Medica — a picturesque 
ruin on the Esquiline near the Porta Mag- 
giore — and the octagonal church built by 
Constantine at Antioch. St. Vitalis differs 
from the former in that it is an octagon in- 
stead of a decagon, and that it is wholly en- 
closed by an octagonal wall, besides which 
its general plan, decorative details and other 
striking analogies which exist between it and 
the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus at 
Constantinople, called by its contemporary 
architects " the Little Sta. Sophia," which 
preceded the great church of that name, 
leave little doubt that this remarkable edifice 
at Ravenna was constructed by a Constanti- 
nopolitan architect, and that it was the first 
appearance of the Byzantine style on the 
western shores of the Adriatic. 

At Sta. Sophia, changed into the temple of 
another faith, the most characteristic orna- 
ments have been hidden by whitewash or 
torn away, while at St. Vitalis Hebrew 
patriarchs, and Christian saints, and the im- 
perial forms of Justinian and his strangely 



303 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

chosen empress, still look down as they did 
thirteen hundred years ago upon the altars 
of Christian worship. 

St. Vitalis is not a Latin basilica, but an 
octagon supporting a dome, a shape which 
seems to have excited the admiration of 
Charlemagne, who caused it to be copied in 
the stately tomb-house which he reared for 
himself in the latter years of the eighth cen- 
tury at Aix-la-Chapelle. 

The original chancel of Charlemagne's 
octagon disappeared during the fourteenth 
century, when it was replaced by the present 
elongated, lofty and luminous structure 
which we now see. That it had one is re- 
coverable by analogy with the very interest- 
ing and perfect octagonal church at Ottmars- 
heim in Alsace, which resembles that at Aix- 
la-Chapelle in so many particulars as to 
leave little doubt on the subject. 

The shapeless brick outside of St. Vitalis 
gives little promise of its sublime interior, its 
cupola, columnar tribunes, and the glorious 
mosaics which encrust its chancel and apse, 
endowing it with a splendour of which it has 
to a great extent been deprived. 

The work, commenced in 526, was com- 
pleted and consecrated about twenty years 
304 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

later by Maximianus, Archbishop of Ra- 
venna from 546 to 556, in the presence of the 
Emperor Justinian and his consort Theo- 
dora,^ Julianus, surnamed Argentarius, hav- 
ing directed the work. 

The plan of St. Vitalis is that of a foliated 
or lobed octagon within a straight-sided one, 
the diameter of the former being but 50 feet, 
while that of the latter is no, so that the 
dome here is one-third less than what may, 
to a certain extent, be considered its proto- 
type — that of the Minerva Medica; but so 
completely had the architect degenerated 
from the dome builders of Rome, that in- 
stead of the scientific construction of the 
above-named temple, this of Ravenna is 
wholly composed of earthen pots fixed into 
very solid mortar. The base of the dome is 
built of pottery taking the form of antique 
pitchers fitting one into the other and placed 
vertically. 

The cap is similarly constructed, but with 
smaller pitchers bound by mortar; these 
earthenware vessels forming a continuous 
spiral line of great lightness, yet of a solidity 
proof against all accident. 

* This ceremony is depicted in one of the grand mosaics 
which adorn the sanctuary. 

305 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The arches on which this central dome 
rests are supported on massive piers, and rise 
to the height of the top of the upper sur- 
rounding galleries or tribunes. Seven of 
these arches thus open into the tribune and 
the aisle below it by a semicircular recessed 
colonnade in two stories, falling into the 
arch above by means of a semi-dome and 
vault. The eighth side protrudes into a 
quadripartitely vaulted chancel that inter- 
rupts the circuit of the aisle and gallery, and 
is prolonged into a sanctuary terminating in 
a much lower semicircular apsis. 

St. Vitalis is removed still further than 
Sta. Sophia from the classic architectural 
tradition, none of its ornaments having been 
borrowed from the ancient monuments. Cer- 
tain capitals are very distinctly reminiscent 
of the Corinthian, but the volutes and leaf- 
age are very far from being pure. Most of 
these capitals are square at the top, and as- 
sume by insensible gradations the circular 
form, sculptured trelliswork helping to re- 
deem the poverty of the outline. On the 
smaller capitals, which are of the Corinthian 
order, we see sculptured anchors, that have 
suggested the tradition of their belonging to 
a temple of Neptune; on the larger, which 
306 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

are Byzantine, are relief monograms, twenty- 
eight in all, one of which has been read by 
some abecedarians as Narses, by others as 
Nepos, probably the name of the architect. 
The others are intelligible enough, as, e. g., 
Ecclesius and Julianus. 

Like all Byzantine constructions St. Vitalis 
has, in spite of its limited dimensions, an as- 
pect of decided grandeur and character, and 
although a good deal was done in the 
baroque epoch to destroy the simplicity of 
the original effect of the building, there is a 
pleasing effect produced by alternating the 
piers with circular columns, and a lightness 
and elegance about the whole design that 
renders it unrivalled in the Western world 
among churches of its class; and it has not 
only served, as I have already remarked, as 
the model for Charlemagne's mausoleum at 
Aix-la-Chapelle, but for many circular 
buildings of that age, which have, unfor- 
tunately, wholly or in part disappeared. 

At the time of my visit St. Vitalis was un- 
dergoing restoration and was, as regards its 
fittings, etc., in a state of bouleversement. It 
is to be hoped that the feeble pseudo-classical 
decorations with which it had been endowed 
will in due course disappear, and give place 
307 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

to works in mosaic which shall emulate those 
glorious sixth-century pictures which render 
the choir and apsidal sanctuary almost a 
gallery of ornamental art. 

Upon the soffit of the chancel arch are 
fifteen medallions, containing life-size heads 
of the Apostles, with that of the Saviour on 
the summit and the martyrs Gervasius and 
Protasius below. Upon the left wall is a 
large picture — the figure almost life-size — 
of Abraham entertaining the '* three men " 
in front of his tent on the *' plains of 
Mamre." They are represented with wings 
like angels, and are seated at the table on 
which the " calf, tender and good/' is laid 
before them. At the side Abraham stands 
** under the tree," and further to the left, at 
the tent door " which was behind him," 
stands Sarah. To the right of this picture 
is Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, and 
looking up at a hand from the clouds point- 
ing to the ram. An arch encloses these, and 
in the spandrels and space above there is at 
one side the Prophet Jeremiah, and at the 
other Moses receiving the Tables of the Law 
in the form of a scroll from a hand stretched 
out from the heavens, while below him 
stands a group of Israelites. Over the centre 
308 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of the arch are floating angels bearing a 
circle containing a Latin cross. Above these 
again is an open arch, supported by pilasters 
and divided into three by columns with most 
exquisitely wrought Byzantine capitals. 
Upon the face of the right pilaster, and 
above the Moses on Mount Sinai is St. Luke, 
sitting in a rocky landscape, the ox beside 
him and the open volume of his Gospel bear- 
ing the words Secundum Lucam. On the 
other pilaster, and above the figure of Jere- 
miah, is St. John with the eagle and his open 
Gospel in like manner. The space above is 
filled with lovely scroll work, and thence 
springs, without interruption, the mosaic or- 
namentation of the vault. 

The central picture on the opposite wall 
shows a rocky landscape. In the foreground 
is a table covered with a white cloth, below 
which is one of violet extending to the 
ground, and upon the table a chalice in the 
centre, with a loaf of bread on either side. 
On the left of the table stands Abel with his 
arms extended over it, holding a lamb in 
both hands; and on the right Melchisedec, 
holding in the same manner a loaf of bread 
resembling those on the table. Melchisedec 
is draped in regal vestments of white with 
309 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

gold ornaments, and advances from a pala- 
tial edifice behind him. Abel, behind whom 
is a rustic hut, is clad in a kind of goatskin 
falling from one shoulder and leaving the 
limbs and upper part of his body bare. 
Above, following the arrangement on the op- 
posite side, are the Prophet Isaiah; Moses 
taking off his shoes before the burning bush, 
his flock below him ; and, on the upper pilas- 
ters, the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. 
Mark, with the emblematic angel and lion, 
and their open Gospels. 

Beyond these the walls are occupied by the 
grand historical pictures of Justinian and 
Theodora with their suites to the right and 
left of the apse, wherein there is a grand 
figure of our Lord seated on the globe. On 
one side is an angel and the Archbishop Ec- 
clesius, holding a model of a round church 
— a building with a circular nave, showing 
alternate windows and buttresses, lean-to roof, 
round clerestory with windows and a high 
conical roof ending in a large cross; on the 
other hand, an angel leads forward the mar- 
tyr soldier Vitalis, to whom the church is 
dedicated. These figures are semi-colossal. 
In that of the " Majesty " the first object of 
the artist has evidently been to represent the 
310 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Divinity in simple, solemn grandeur. The 
face is that of a godlike youth with richly 
clustered hair. The great globe on which he 
sits is azure blue. He is draped in an admi- 
rably arranged tunic and mantle, both of rich 
purple, without ornament, and His left hand 
rests on a bound volume, closed, with seven 
black bands and seals. 

After coffee in the Piazza Vittorio Eman- 
uele, I set off one afternoon for St. ApoUi- 
naris in Classe, visiting on the way the im- 
posing cruciform early classical church of 
Sta. Maria in Porto, whose nave is supported 
on isolated Tuscan columns tapering at both 
ends. 

A detour was also made for the purpose 
of inspecting the charming Sta. Maria in 
Porto Fuori, with its wealth of fresco paint- 
ings of the school of Giotto. 

I shall not readily forget the first impres- 
sion received of St. Apollinaris in Classe — 
that still noble though now forlorn sixth- 
century monument — as I approached it on 
a fine sunny breezy afternoon by a solitary 
road cleaving a vast marshy plain. 

Mournful was the landscape, bounded 
westward by the distant Apennines in low 
but gracefully varied outlines, and to the 
311 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

east by the historic pine forest, extending as 
far as eye can see, as it separates the level 
maremma from the sea with its dense growth, 
and presenting the apparent solidity and reg- 
ularity in form of another mountain chain. 

Although June, yet even that joyous season 
could not dispel the monotonous melancholy 
of the scene, thoroughly in harmony as it 
was with the great lone church. 

When Ravenna was an important naval 
station, and the sea (now nearly six miles 
distant) only divided from her walls by the 
waters of a vast lagoon amidst which they 
rose, Augustus turned these local advantages 
to account by constructing a harbour capable 
of sheltering two hundred and fifty ships, 
called Partus Classis, between which and the 
city soon sprang up a populous suburb, or 
rather additional town, known as Cesarea. 

The basilica of St. Apollinaris, about two 
miles distant from the Ravenna of the pres- 
ent day, is the sole monument that retains 
merely in its name the records of that popu- 
lous quarter, never restored after having been 
devastated by the Lombards in 728. 

In the story of architecture this once mag- 
nificent church fills a conspicuous place, be 
ing described by Agincourt as " a new exam 
312 



RAVENNA 

St. Apollinaris in Clause 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

pie of the blending of the form of the temple 
with that of the ancient basilica, in order to 
its adaptation for the rites and usages of the 
Church in early Christian periods." Consid- 
ered the most perfect model of its class in 
Italy, St. Apollinaris in Classe has, notwith- 
standing such high claims, been subjected to 
many and grievous outrages, from which it 
has only of late years emerged by careful 
restoration. In its neglected state it must 
have seemed a mournfully impressive type 
of the decline of that ancient Christian city 
itself, that pure and apostolic constitution of 
the Church of the first four centuries, over 
whose ruins the potent system of the Papacy 
has been constructed. 

St. Apollinaris — this basilica of Cesarea 
— was finished about 549 after rapid execu- 
tion of the works under the direction of Juli- 
anus, the treasurer (argentarius) who here 
represented the government of Justinian, and 
who had already founded the splendid octag- 
onal church of St. Vitalis within the city's 
ancient circuit. The atrium, which, with its 
porticoes, extended in front, has regrettably 
disappeared. 

The nave, 130 feet long, is divided from 
its aisles by twenty-four columns of violet 
313 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

marble from Hymettus, forming a magnifi- 
cent prelude to an apse covered with mosaics. 
Their Corinthian capitals are less elegant 
than elsewhere in Ravenna, and although 
based on examples at Thessalonica, the de- 
sign and execution are due to inferior Greek 
sculptors. The responds of the arcades are 
decorated with ornament in plaster, which, 
if clumsy, is vigorous in treatment, and may 
have supplied the motif for the capitals of 
the court of the Town Hall at Bologna of 
the fourteenth century. 

A flight of steps in the last bay of the nave 
leads directly to the apse whose conch retains 
its mosaics — probably ordered by the Arch- 
bishop Agnellus (553-566), and the most 
precious among art works still preserved 
here — in their olden and characteristic 
beauty. 

In 596 a monastery was added to the 
church. In the ninth century restorations 
were effected by Pope Leo III, but in later 
times the work of spoliation began. 

Many valuable mosaics perished; of more 
than fifty windows the greater number were 
ruthlessly blocked up; the pillared atrium 
was removed ; the walls were stripped of the 
fine marble with which they were completely 
314 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

clothed, by order of Sigismund Malatesta, 
lord of Rimini, to which city those spoils 
were transferred in 145 1. 

The monastery was suppressed, its build- 
ings left desolate from a period not, I be- 
lieve, certain, some poor tenements occupy- 
ing the remains of the cloistral appendages. 

On the evening of my visit the only signs 
of life about the place were some cocks and 
hens, who, in their own fashion, were enjoy- 
ing themselves mightily in the unkempt piece 
of sunken grass land adjoining the church on 
its north side. 

The exterior, plain and venerably simple, 
has no very remarkable features left to it 
save the high cylindrical campanile that tow- 
ers up grandly at the north-east angle, and 
a vast and lofty western porch once con- 
nected with the now completely vanished 
atrium. 

Still, the effect, as one enters the nave, has 
an almost unearthly grandeur and beauty, not 
altogether obliterated by the sad vicissitudes 
the building has passed through. 

The portraits of archbishops in medallions 
still look down in solemn company from 
above the arcades; not more than three al- 
tars (probably the usual number, if indeed 
315 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

more than one was admitted in basilicas of 
the same period) are seen, each surmounted 
by a richly moulded marble canopy, in the 
perspective beyond the files of pillars — ex- 
cept one other, isolated in the nave, and evi- 
dently of more recent date. Small and cubic 
in form, it bears an inscription telling how 
St. Apollinaris twice appeared on this spot, 
and thence proceeded to cense the holy place, 
visible during his vigils to the youthful St. 
Romuald, and enjoining him to devote him- 
self to a religious life before that step had 
been taken by the founder of the Camaldu- 
lese Order. Eight marble sarcophagi, the 
tombs of archbishops, in the aisles, present 
examples of early Christian symbolism in 
their relief ornaments. The portraits of 
those prelates, in the nave of mosaic, in the 
aisles of fresco painting, have been com- 
pleted in succession down to recent times, 
and below, between and in the reveals of the 
windows, are some fine mosaic pictures rep- 
resenting Constantine Pogonatus and his 
brother bestowing a privilegium on Bishop 
Reparatus about 670, in which the deacons 
all wear long surplices reaching to the feet, 
and with wide sleeves. There are also fig- 



316 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ures of SS. Ecclesius, Severus, Ursus, Urci- 
sinus, all in albs and with pallia. 

On the half-dome of the apse the Trans- 
figuration is represented. In the centre is a 
Latin cross within an ellipsis; at the junc- 
tion of the arms is the head of our Lord, and 
near the ends of the transverse beams are the 
letters A and H, and at the foot of the cross 
is the inscription " Salus Mundi." Above is 
a hand appearing from the clouds, and at 
the sides Moses and Elias. Lower down are 
three sheep, symbolical of SS. Peter, James 
and John. Still lower down is St. Apolli- 
naris with his arms extended and six sheep 
on each side of him. He has a nimbus, and 
is vested in a long white dalmatic on which 
are purple clavi, an oval chasuble, a white 
pallium and white shoes with black crosses 
on them. He is represented as an aged man 
with tonsure and beard. 

On the face of the arch are the two cities, 
Jerusalem and Bethlehem, with twelve sheep 
ascending from them. Higher up is the 
half-figure of Christ in a circular medallion, 
nimbed, and with the right hand raised in the 
act of blessing according to the Greek form. 
At His right side are the symbols of SS. John 



317 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and Matthew, and at His left those of SS. 
Mark and Luke. 

Opposite the mosaic of the Privilegia are 
shown the sacrifices of Abel, Melchisedec 
and Abraham, and an altar is represented in 
perspective, its most noticeable feature being 
its table form, covered with a white embroi- 
dered cloth and having on it a two-handled 
cup, and two other ornaments, which, it may 
not unreasonably be supposed, are meant for 
patens. 

In these mosaics at St. Apollinaris, as well 
as in those at St. Vitalis and the archiepis- 
copal palace, classic influence, in the common 
acceptance of the term, is no longer recog- 
nizable. It has given place to the realistic, 
bearing in fact the impress of the time when 
they were executed. Instead of reflecting 
Pagan art traditions, glorified by Christian 
sentiment, as visible in the picture of the 
Good Shepherd in the mausoleum of Galla 
Placidia, they demonstrate how fully artists 
had become imbued with the spirit both of 
the Old and the New Testament histories, 
and how completely it had taken the place 
of that imparted by the earlier myths. The 
very rare use of silver leaf tesserae occurs in 
these works. I also learnt that mother-of- 
318 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

pearl, ivory and egg-shell also were used, 
but for the truth of the last-named I am 
unable to vouch; certainly I could find no 
traces of it. 

Ere my studies at St. ApoUinaris in Classe 
were concluded, the shades of evening had 
begun to fall. 

For a few moments,! stood watching the 
last gleam of the setting sun on the Apen- 
nines from beneath the western portico, the 
awful stillness of the environing marshy 
landscape being alone broken by the contin- 
ual croaking of frogs, to whose music, as I 
retraced my steps along the straight, monot- 
onous road, I wedded Martial's line: 

Meliusque ranae garriunt Ravennates.^ 

On approaching the city I fell in with the 
boys of the Cathedral School, who, in their 
cassocks, purple sashes and shovel hats, were 
taking an evening constitutional under the 
surveillance of several ecclesiastics. All re- 
sponded very politely to my salutation. 

Having watched the party go by, I struck 
into some meadows on the eastern side of the 
city commanding a view of the old campa- 

^ Ravenna's frogs in better measure croak. 
319 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

nili, from which the last flush of sunset was 
fading to leave them cold and grey once 
more; and, throwing myself upon a grassy 
bank, drew from my pocket an old number 
of The Dublin Review containing an article 
by Cardinal Wiseman on Ravenna, a short 
extract from which may fitly conclude this 
chapter: 

" Whoever loves early Christian monu- 
ments, whoever desires to see them in greater 
perfection than the lapse of fourteen centu- 
ries would warrant us in expecting, whoever 
desires to study them unaided by the remains 
of heathen antiquity, should make every ef- 
fort to spend some days at least in this noble 
and imperial city. From Rome it differs 
mainly in this, that your meditations are not 
disturbed by the constant recurrence of pagan 
remains, nor your researches perplexed by 
the necessity of inquiring what was built and 
what was borrowed by the faithful. Ra- 
venna has only one antiquity, and that is 
Christian. 

" Seated, like Rome, in the midst of an 
unhealthy, desolate plain, except when its 
unrivalled pine forests cast a shade of deeper 
solitude and melancholy over it — quiet and 
lonely, without the sound of wheels upon its 
320 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

grass-grown pavement — it has not merely 
to lament over the decay of ancient magnifi- 
cence, but upon its total destruction, except 
w^hat religion has erected for herself. She 
was not in time to apply her saving as well 
as purifying unction to the basilicas and tem- 
ples of receding ages; or rather, she seemed 
to occupy what she could replace, and there- 
fore, in the strength of imperial favour, 
raised new buildings for the Christian wor- 
ship such as no other city but Rome could 
boast of." 



321 



CHAPTER VIII 

SOME LOMBARD CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES 
— MODENA, PARMA, PIACENZA, CREMONA, 
PAVIA 

Many people start on their travels under 
the impression that Italy is a land of marble; 
if not morally and spiritually, yet as certainly 
in the material structure of its houses and 
churches. 

No sooner do they cross the Alps than they 
become convinced of their mistake. The 
nature of the country at once explains the 
cause. Lombardy, that lies stretched across 
the top of Italy, with the Alps to the north, 
the Apennines to the south, is, to speak 
broadly, one rich, flat alluvial plain, and al- 
though the splendid marble quarries of Car- 
rara were accessible to them, the early 
church builders of North Italy did not think 
it worth their while to send to neighbouring 
countries for the material of their churches. 
They moulded the native clay under their 
322 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

feet to their purpose, and sanctified the 
coarseness of the material by the beauty of 
form into which they worked it. 

One of the earliest Lombard examples, St. 
Michele at Pavia, is however altogether 
stone and marble, at least externally. 

But after this early and, if I mistake not, 
unique example, the use of brick becomes 
universally prevalent; at first in alternate 
stripes of brick and stone as in the Cathedral 
at Verona, then brick with marble columns 
and ornaments as in the Campanile of St. 
Gothardo, then entirely of brick as at St. 
Michele, Cremona, and St. Ambrose, Milan. 

If we have a doubt that so rude and cheap 
a material is unsuited to the dignity and cost- 
liness becoming the house of God, we are soon 
convinced that the prejudice is unfounded 
when we perceive the beauty into which this 
material has been wrought in Lombard ar- 
chitecture; and those who know, even by 
pictures only, the leaning towers of Bologna 
and the cloisters of the Certosa near Pavia, 
must acknowledge that their picturesqueness 
of form and beauty of colour have seldom 
been surpassed by the most elaborate work- 
manship of stone and marble. 

It is from Lombardy that we have drawn 
323 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the capabilities and development of brick. 
How exquisitely do those tall red campanili 
adorn the flat and otherwise monotonous 
plains from which they spring! They are 
often only receptacles for a single bell, three 
or four at most, and this accounts for their 
exceeding slimness and great height in com- 
parison to the square of their base. The 
proportions of many of these bell towers are 
ten times the square of their sides; and up 
to this height they run in an uninterrupted 
plain square tower of panelled brickwork, 
unbroken either by window or ornament, 
crowned as a rule by an open arcade and 
capped by a stunted pyramidal roof. 

Were it my intention to advocate an an- 
achronistic revival of any art form, I should 
unhesitatingly recommend the thorough study 
of the exquisitely elegant forms of Italian 
Romanesque architecture. Then, as at pres- 
ent, the artists of the ecclesiastical Transition 
style were still seeking, without clear con- 
sciousness, some corresponding forms to ex- 
press the higher spiritual tendencies of Chris- 
tianity. Dissatisfied with the current blend- 
ing of classic and Byzantine elements, they 
were inspired by some unknown ideal, by 
some incomprehensible longing to find a new 
324 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

style. The very language of the Latin race 
underwent a great change. The material 
was furnished, as in architecture, by the 
Greeks and Romans. The old roots were 
kept, but the periods, the inflections, were 
borrowed from the victorious Teuton spirit. 
The Latin declensions and conjugations were 
simplified, or altogether discarded, the weigh- 
tier sounds changed into softer and more 
sonorous ones, and an admixture of old Teu- 
ton and Roman founded the rapidly devel- 
oping Italian tongue. 

In perfect analogy with this lingual 
change, the architects during the ninth and 
tenth centuries began to construct in a differ- 
ent style, altering what was too difficult, and 
omitting what they did not understand, of 
the old Christian style, imitating only so 
much as was strictly suitable. Thus the old 
basilica of early Christian architecture was, 
by degrees, transformed into the Romanesque 
church. Capitals and mouldings still bore 
some reminiscences of classicism, but the or- 
namentation was executed more in the spirit 
of wood carving, and architecture took up 
forms of construction, rather in harmony 
with the use of brick and wood than with 
that of stone. To say that the Romanesque 
325 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

style was purely imitative is fallacious. The 
Byzantine elements were ignored, and the 
basilica underwent a thorough process of 
transformation. 

The change began in the interior. The 
choir was made more imposing by the addi- 
tion of a square space before the apse; the 
plan of the foundation assumed the cruci- 
form one, and crypts, in some instances en- 
tered directly from the nave, were con- 
structed, thereby adding greatly to the dig- 
nity of the most sacred part of the building. 
Already in the old basilica the use of arches 
admitted of greater distances between the 
pillars, which were placed still further apart 
in the Romanesque. The distances of the 
columns were either exactly or nearly half 
the breadth of the central nave, thus pro- 
ducing a rhythmical efifect that created a 
powerful impression, and bringing the oppo- 
site columns into an harmonious union. 

This change brought about another. The 
flat wall superstructure, the flat wood encof- 
fered ceiling, was in no way connected with 
the supporting arches. 

In the Italo-Romanesque, the free column 
was replaced by the massive pillar, and the 
wall, brought into close connection with the 
326 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

foundation, was broken only by arched open- 
ings, so as to connect, through their mighty 
arches, the side aisles with the central nave. 

The columns were still used, not only to 
ornament the pillars, but as marked supports 
of the projecting cornices and principal 
arched mouldings. The columns were doubly 
necessary, when the aisles became arched. 
First, only the two side aisles received the 
cross-vault, but at a later period the central 
aisle was also vaulted. In France and Italy, 
and in certain parts of Germany, galleries or 
" Emporia " were constructed above the side 
aisles — in the last-named country at least to 
separate the males from the females of the 
congregation, as is still the custom in the 
Oriental Church. The plan of the pillars 
became complex, and was the root of the 
deeply moulded arches and the essence of 
the whole construction. 

The roof rested on lofty attached columns, 
and formed a vaulted crown. 

These forms are neither classically antique 
nor Gothic; they constitute the transition 
from one style to another. 

The Romanesque is not a more or less 
close imitation of the features of the Roman 
architecture, nor is there in this style what 
327 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Dr. Whewell termed " a predominance of 
vertical lines," for one has only to glance at 
a view of the Church of St. ApoUinaris in 
Classe at Ravenna, and then at one of St 
Zeno at Verona, or St. Michele at Pavia, to 
see that the striving up vertical lines mark- 
edly predominate. 

The style of this tenth- to thirteenth-cen- 
tury period has many advantages. 

The forms are simple, and if not always 
graceful, the expression is clear, decided, and 
produces a feeling of repose perfectly in ac- 
cordance with the earnest religious sentiment 
of the day. The solemn strains of a plain 
song psalm or hymn pervade the architecture 
of such a structure as St. Ambrose at Milan, 
or of those grouped in this chapter, and to 
which the above remarks may be taken as 
prefatory — the Cathedrals of Parma, Pia- 
cenza, Modena, Cremona and St. Michele 
at Pavia. 

Like the Rhenish Germans, the Italians of 
the Lombard plains abandoned this grand 
transitional style just when it was at its rich- 
est and best, yet still capable of fresh devel- 
opments, to embrace the complete Gothic 
style, which they never understood, and 
which consequently never took root in Italy. 
328 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Several varieties and distinct schools may be 
found, and capable of certain rules and ar- 
rangements, but they never seem to have suc- 
ceeded wholly in throwing off the influence 
of classical examples. 

The great Cathedral of Milan, magnifi- 
cent as it is, will scarcely bear the test of 
the principles of genuine Gothic; whilst the 
really pure Gothic church of Assisi — that 
storehouse of Christian art — is known to 
have been designed by a German, Jacopo 
Tedesco. 

The influence of the Lombards in Italy 
and the iconoclastic rupture of the eighth 
century, by which a multitude of Greek ar- 
tists were scattered over the Continent, gave 
a new impulse to Western Europe. 

Italy became politically independent of the 
Byzantine Empire, and the Church of Rome 
thenceforward independent of that at Con- 
stantinople. A more advanced style of ar- 
chitecture, with a complete and connected 
system of forms, soon prevailed wherever the 
Latin Church spread its influence, and an 
associated body of freemasons powerfully 
contributed to its diffusion over Europe. 

It has been called Lombardic, or, perhaps 
more conveniently, Romanesque. Connected 
329 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

by the basilica of Western Europe with the 
buildings destined for the same purpose in 
the East; it forms a connecting link between 
the classic and the purely Pointed Gothic 
styles of architecture. 

Grand as these Romanesque churches of 
the Lombard plains are in the mass, they are 
not faultless. Their flat walls are frequently 
monotonous; their interiors are but ill- 
lighted, in some places obscure, in others 
flooded with a glaring light; the distribu- 
tion of the decorative element is not always 
happy, porches, pillars and capitals being 
overcrowded with variegated patterns, inter- 
mingled with empty, unadorned walls. They 
impress us too powerfully with the unsettled 
state of the minds of those who designed 
them. The cowls of the religious and the 
heavy armour of the warrior may be traced 
in them. 

They reflect likewise the convulsions of 
the times; a people under the influence of 
an empty ecclesiastical formalism, and long- 
ing for freedom; pride in the mighty walls, 
humility in the compressed pillars; a power- 
ful and unbroken sense of independence in 
the rich ornamentation, a striving for new 



330 






The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

forms in the conflicting details, which are 
half pagan, half Christian. 

It was five o'clock in the morning of the 
" Corpus Domini," which fell that year on 
the fourteenth of June, when I set out from 
Ravenna on a little tour amid that group of 
old Lombardic Romanesque churches that 
has served as a peg whereon to hang the 
foregoing remarks. The newly risen sun 
was just gilding the tops of the domes and 
steeples; few people were abroad; and such 
outward and visible signs that the day was 
to be made a high festival of, as banners, 
festoons, draped balconies and window-sills, 
and reposoirs for the Blessed Sacrament, 
were nowhere to be seen. Nor did Bologna, 
where I had a wait of a few hours, before 
a train could be got for Modena, present a 
more festive appearance. 

At St. Petronio there was High Mass, 
with orchestral accompaniment, which could 
not be enjoyed on account of the incessant 
fidgeting of the congregation, trafficking in 
chairs, promenading up and down the aisles, 
in at one door and out at another, and so on. 
I therefore repaired to the Cathedral, where 
numberless guilds and confraternities assem- 



331 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

bled for the out-door procession, which 
started forth to a lively air played by a band 
stationed just outside, as soon as the Cardi- 
nal Archbishop had arrived and was vested, 
which took up a considerable time. 

Modena 

It was at Modena that I got my first 
glimpse of the genuine Lombard form of the 
Italian Romanesque, a form quite unlike 
either the domical or the basilican type, 
which makes a far nearer approach to the 
Northern Romanesque of Bamberg and Co- 
logne, of Neuss and Werden; indeed the 
three eastern apses with their open arcades 
rising between pinnacled turrets of quite a 
Northern character transported one to the 
banks of the Rhine. The Lombards had but 
little art of their own. Roman and Greek 
architects built their early churches and min- 
istered to their more primitive tastes. Be- 
tween the eleventh and thirteenth centuries 
the dynamic superiority of the Teutons in 
politics and religion, in architecture and 
plastic art, quickly developed and spread 
over Europe; and although Modena Cathe- 
dral is, taken in the mass, a strictly Italian 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

church, yet the approaches to Northern 
forms are so very marked that they suggest 
the direct imitation of Northern forms in 
the employment of Teutonic architects. 

The present Cathedral dates from very 
early in the twelfth century, the old one hav- 
ing fallen, or threatened to fall, towards the 
close of the eleventh; this date would make 
it almost contemporary with the other great 
Romanesque cathedrals of Cremona, Parma 
and Piacenza, which, at any rate as regards 
plan, it greatly resembles. The original ar- 
chitect at Modena was " a certain Lanfran- 
cus, a wonderful builder," who, as the old 
chronicles inform us, " was at length found 
to design so great a work." In 1106 the 
crypt was ready to receive the body of St. 
Geminianus, but after this the works appear 
to have hung fire, seventy-eight years elaps- 
ing ere the church was completed and con- 
secrated. 

The plan of Modena Cathedral is a par- 
allel-triapsidal rectangle, a hundred and 
ninety feet long by about seventy feet broad, 
and its material is brick faced externally 
with marble, of a reddish hue, except at the 
west end, where it is a beautiful greyish 
white. Longitudinally, the church has five 
333 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

great divisions, the four western ones being 
marked externally by gables rising a little 
above the red-tiled roofs, and further accen- 
tuated by the shallow buttress, which, intro- 
duced between each pair of round-headed 
windows in the clerestory, is prolonged down 
the lean-to roofs of the aisles. 

The other salient points in the southern 
elevation of Modena Cathedral, which bears 
a great resemblance to the less well-pre- 
served one at Ferrara, are the tall shallow 
arcades, enclosing, high up in the wall, three 
smaller ones, and without which the com- 
position would appear monotonous; the 
porches, one with its pillars resting on the 
backs of couchant beasts, and each with that 
peculiar Lombardic feature, the recessed 
loggia or pronaos, above the entrance; the 
manner in which the shallow arcades afore- 
said are continued alongside the somewhat 
higher choir, and where the gable which as- 
sumes the place of the lean-to roof gives the 
impression that the architect had not quite 
made up his mind whether or no to project a 
transept, and thus halted between two opin- 
ions; the small windows in the basement of 
this soidisant transept which light the crypt; 
the picturesquely corbelled pulpit; the pretty, 
334 



MODENA 
West Front of the Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

deeply moulded, and octofoiled circle in the 
centre of the gable, and the plate-traceried 
two-light window below it, both indicating 
a desire for the more sparkling contours of 
the Pointed Gothic. 

All these features combine to make up an 
elevation, which, if of modest dimensions, is 
as charming as any of its own age and class 
in Lombardy. 

On the north side of the Cathedral, but 
separated by the width of a lane, stands the 
loveliest of North Italian campaniles, which 
has probably earned its title of Ghirlandina 
from the graceful arcades and balcony curi- 
ously introduced towards the summit of its 
octagonal spire. 

This spire, together with the lantern from 
which it springs, shows the hand of the four- 
teenth-century Gothic and of the early Re- 
naissance architects. Each has certainly 
done his best to make these additions syn- 
chronize with the early sub-structure. A 
wall pierced with an archway surmounted 
by a passage connects the campanile with the 
body of the Cathedral. Some carving in the 
doorway on this side of the church, repre- 
senting the months, will engage the student 
of iconography, as will those in the western 
335 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

facade, which shows the same system of 
mural arcuation as the aisles. Unlike the 
usual Lombard screen-like west front with 
its low-pitched gable, such as we see at 
Parma, Piacenza, Pavia, St. Ambrose, Milan 
and elsewhere, this of Modena Cathedral is 
more truthful as it exposes the clerestory and 
lean-to aisles. The four orders of moulding 
in the great central wheel window, which 
contains some fragments of ancient stained 
glass, are noteworthy from the variety of 
their treatment. 

Solemn Vespers of the Corpus Domini 
were about to commence when I passed from 
all the glory of the afternoon sunshine into 
the Cathedral. As I set foot within the 
nave, where the first thing that attracted my 
wandering gaze was a black poodle dog, 
shaved in the most approved fashion, and 
calmly seated on the steps of one of the side 
altars, the organ struck up a solemn piece, 
and the officiants — three priests and two 
choir rulers, all in cloth of gold copes — 
came slowly forth from the sacristy. 

Advancing up the dusky northern aisle, I 

mounted the stately escalier at the end of it, 

and took my station close to the parclose 

screen of the choir, ready to assist at the 

336 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

service. A small one-manual organ — the 
only instrument the Cathedral boasts — stood 
on the floor against the northern wall of the 
quasi-transept, and about it was stationed 
a choir of men who sang the psalms in con- 
certed parts under the baton of an ecclesias- 
tic, while the antiphons were chanted to the 
plain song by the clergy in the apse of the 
high choir. The latter got a trifle flat, caus- 
ing the faces of the outside choir, who by 
the way were in the garb of every-day life, 
to exhibit tokens of risibility, while sundry 
winks and nudges which passed between 
them had anything but an ecclesiastical ap- 
pearance. The Office hymn, the Lauda Sion 
Salvatorem sung to its proper ancient mel- 
ody, was very enjoyable, but at the conclu- 
sion of the Magnificat the individuals in 
plain clothes above mentioned decamped, 
leaving the inside choir to get on as best they 
might, and making a good deal of unneces- 
sary clatter as they descended the steps and 
went out along the aisle, through whose open 
west door the sunlight playing on the pave- 
ment of the piazza in front of the Cathedral 
produced a most charming efifect. 

It was pleasant, on entering Modena Ca- 
thedral, to find an elevation more nearly 
337 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

after the Northern type than anything which 
I had yet seen in Italy. Pisa has an arcade, 
triforium and clerestory, but the triforium is 
not so much of the Northern type itself as 
the Northern type translated into Italian lan- 
guage. 

Here, however, I beheld a triforium — 
somewhat rude and awkward, as if the arch 
containing the three arcades had been 
crushed by the loftier clerestory above. 
Each of the four great Pointed vaulting bays 
into which the nave at Modena is divided, 
comprises two lesser round-arched ones, the 
capitals of their isolated marble columns, 
and of the attached brick ones, which either 
form the responds of these coupled nave ar- 
cades or support the intermediate arches of 
the simple quadripartite vaulting, being a 
curious mingling of classical and barbaric 
forms. 

There is no floor to the triforium gallery, 
nor could I discover any traces of there hav- 
ing been one; consequently the aisles of Mo- 
dena Cathedral are of unusual height, an 
arched corbel table dividing their walls at 
the level of the capitals of the half-columns 
which support the transverse brick arches. 

This opening of the triforium arcade into 
338 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the aisles, as at Rochester and Rouen Cathe- 
drals, has a very singular appearance. 

Another noteworthy feature of the interior 
of Modena Cathedral is the absence of hori- 
zontal lines, there being no string-course to 
either triforium or clerestory. The conse- 
quence is, that the arcades and windows ap- 
pear as though they were merely pierced in 
the mass of red brickwork. Another detail 
is the small corbel just above the coupled 
round-headed windows of the clerestory, 
from which the two wall arches in each bay 
spring, pointing to the probability that the 
vaulting was to have been a sexpartite one, 
i. e., with six cells, instead of the four we 
now see. The Cathedral was originally de- 
signed with a wooden roof, like St. Miniato 
at Florence and St. Zeno at Verona, so that 
the present vaulting is a subsequent addition, 
manifest from the awkward way in which it 
interferes with the clerestory windows, and 
there being no provision for the diagonal 
ribs, these corbels were placed for their re- 
ception. 

The open lantern is wanting at Modena, 
and the crossing is unmarked by any devia- 
tion from the vaulting of the nave. 

The choir, from which the shallow tran- 
339 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

septs open, and the short apsidal recess be- 
yond, have an unusually dignified appear- 
ance from their elevation upon the crypt, 
which extends under the whole of the church 
beyond the nave. Such is the elevation of 
this crypt that the capitals of the columns 
supporting the two easternmost arches of the 
nave arcade are on a level with the floor of 
the choir. 

Originally the choir was approached from 
the nave by a flight of steps as at Parma, 
but at a later period these were removed, 
and the present graceful kind of porch with 
its pillars of varied form supporting a bal- 
cony, introduced probably with the view of 
giving additional floor space to the choir. 
The crypt, hitherto concealed, was now ex- 
posed to the nave, and a staircase to the choir 
constructed at the east end of either aisle 
with hand rails supported on gracefully 
sculptured pillarets. 

Two of the central columns in the outer- 
most range which support this added bal- 
cony, are, together with the lintel, rich in 
sculpture, and rest on the shoulders of men 
who crouch between the shaft and its base, 
while the whole is supported by a couchant 
beast, under which is the crushed and pros- 
340 



MODENA 
Interior of the Cathedral 

Entrance to the Crypt 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

trate figure of a helmeted knight with shield 
and lance. 

Beneath this deep gallery three arches 
open into the crypt. They are fitted with 
metal grilles and gates, and on the walls 
flanking them are two panels of sculptured 
subjects, one illustrating the evangelistic sym- 
bols, and the other seated figures of the Latin 
doctors, while above each panel hovers the 
figure of an angel. 

The crypt extends under the choir, tran- 
septs and aisles, and, although not vast, pre- 
sents picturesque avenues of slender pillars, 
which at its widest part form an arcade of 
nine openings. 

In that portion of the crypt corresponding 
to the apse are fluted and apparently modern 
pillars, in all probability introduced to sus- 
tain the superincumbent weight of a heavy 
high altar and altar-piece, which latter has 
disappeared to give place to decorations in 
harmony with the environing architecture. 
The semi-dome of the apse is painted with 
the Coronation of the Virgin; the frieze 
contains busts, and between the three round- 
headed windows are full-length figures, the 
whole forming an impressive comble to the 
view from the west door. So fascinated was 
341 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

I with the interior of Modena Cathedral 
that I paid it several enraptured visits, some 
fresh beauty of form or detail presenting 
itself at every successive one. My last round 
was made as darkness fell, and just about the 
time of closing, while an earthy-looking old 
sacristan, and eke a thirsty soul for centimes 
and liras, made the circuit of the building, 
snuffing out with his fingers the tapers that 
had been flaring and guttering all day before 
statues and pictures, finally snuffing himself 
from a box in his waistcoat pocket. 

Far ma 

From Modena I journeyed to Parma, 
through those endless Lombardy plains whosfe 
fertility nothing can exceed. They are hun- 
dreds of miles of uninterrupted garden. 
The same eternal level road; the same rows 
of trees and poplars on either side ; the same 
long slimy canals; the same square, vine- 
laced, stream-intersected and perfectly green 
pastures and cornfields, where, although only 
mid-June, harvesting was in operation; the 
same shaped houses; the same shaped 
churches, with their everlasting cupolas and 
campanili. But they are wearisome, these 
342 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Lombard plains, spite of so much luxuriance 
and the nightingales, — who sing by day 
however, as not specified in poetry; they 
are up quite as early as the lark, and the 
green hedges are alive with their gurgling 
and changeful music till twilight. At night, 
the hedges and fields are perfectly illumi- 
nated by fireflies, whom I found really quite 
companionable during a subsequent solitary 
and tedious ride from Parma to Piacenza, 
when I might as well have tried the poetical 
impossibility of " reading by the glow- 
worm's light" as endeavour to see anything 
by the finger glass which dimly illuminated 
the long third-class railway carriage. 

Within a few minutes of my arrival at the 
comfortable Albergo della Posta at Parma, 
I found myself on the retired Piazza, where 
the Cathedral, Campanile, Baptistery and 
Renaissance Church of St. Giovanni stand 
clustered in noble and magnificent repose. 

The largest of all Lombard Romanesque 
churches, the Duomo of Parma was rebuilt 
on an old foundation after an earthquake, 
which laid in ruins a building dating from 
the sixth century. The present noble struc- 
ture was begun in 1060, and was sufficiently 
advanced to be consecrated in 1106. In plan 
343 



PARMA 

Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of four arcades to each bay, all of the same 
height, and above them are oblong wall 
spaces, intended by the architect for picto- 
rial enrichment. Some of the pillarets in 
this triforium arcade at Parma exhibit carv- 
ing quite classical in feeling. The clere- 
story windows are single round-headed ones; 
the arch spanning the nave transversely at 
the distance of each attached pier is round, 
while the ribs of the quadripartite vaulting 
are pointed : and the whole is gorgeous in 
Renaissance fresco painting, which, to the 
lover of pure early Gothic forms, has a dis- 
turbing effect. The string-course, a feature 
absent at Modena in the elevation of the in- 
terior, is at Parma a conspicuous one, being 
introduced between the pier arches and the 
triforium arcade, and at the spring of the 
vault. In the capitals of the columns sup- 
porting the nave arcades we can discern that 
grotesqueness mingled with serious realism, 
of which Ruskin has drawn so vivid a pic- 
ture in the following passage from his Stones 
of Venice: 

" The Lombard of early times seems to 

have been exactly what a tiger would be if 

you could give him love of a joke, vigorous 

imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of 

345 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

hell, knowledge of northern mythology, a 
stone den and a mallet and chisel. Fancy 
him pacing up and down the said den to 
digest his dinner, and striking on the wall 
with a new fancy in his head at every turn, 
and you have the Lombard sculptor." 

Yet with all the rudeness which marks 
them, these sculptured capitals in the nave 
of the Duomo at Parma are instinct with 
virility, force of imagination and Northern 
energy and wildness. The people who 
carved them carved what was in their minds, 
and the spirit of their work bears a close 
resemblance to the grotesque sculpture of the 
twelfth- and thirteenth-century Northern 
Gothic. 

The whole of the church beyond the west- 
ern arch of the lantern is raised upon a crypt, 
the finest in Lombardy, the broad flight of 
seventeen steps necessitated by such an ar- 
rangement, and which occupy the whole of 
the easternmost pier arch on either side, im- 
parting much dignity and interest to this no- 
ble interior, besides showing us what the orig- 
inal arrangement was like at Modena. Sim- 
ilar flights lead up from the aisles to the 
transepts, whence the views across the church 
in any direction are remarkably fine. The 
346 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

whole of the transepts and choir, internally, 
evince the unsparing hand of an architect 
of the Renaissance, nor is it possible to praise 
the painting with which the nave and aisles 
have been bedaubed. Though aiming at 
medievalism, it is not severe enough to be in 
harmony with the architectural details. In 
fact this grand Lombard church has been 
entirely ruined by these paintings, which 
have been applied without the slightest 
thought of the requirements of the building, 
and as a matter of course they militate very 
severely against its effects. 

Correggio's " Assumption of the Virgin," 
completely covers, but, in its present condi- 
tion, cannot be said to improve the lantern 
and dome above the four arches of the great 
crossing. It is chiefly remarkable for its 
chiaroscuro, for its wonderful foreshorten- 
ings, and for the extensive range in the size 
of the figures, in order to convey, by their 
perspective diminution, an impression of 
great space. 

So little was this astonishing eflPort of Cor- 
reggio's genius appreciated by the ignorant 
ecclesiastics who employed him in its execu- 
tion, that not only was the performance 
treated with contempt and ridicule — one 
347 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of their body, in allusion to the fact that 
many more limbs than bodies are visible 
from below telling him that he had made 
un guazzetto di rane, a " hash of frogs " — 
but the artist himself with contumely; and 
what is the more to be lamented, his la- 
bours were not only scandalously underpaid, 
but became the very cause of his untimely 
decease. Not content with verbally depreci- 
ating his work, the illiberality of the canons, 
his employers, showed itself in refusing him 
the stipulated price, and in compelling him 
to accept the paltry sum of five hundred 
crowns, which, the more to hurt his feelings, 
was paid in copper. Returning with this 
sum to his starving family, the heat of the 
weather and the weight of his load, con- 
spired to overcome the unfortunate artist, 
who imprudently quenching his thirst at a 
spring of cold water on the road, a pleurisy 
ensued, which carried him ofif in his fortieth 
year. Among those of the profession who 
more especially did justice to the genius and 
execution of Correggio, were Annibal Ca- 
racci and Titian; the former about half a 
century after his decease, not only speaking 
in the highest terms of his abilities but mak- 
ing him his model, while to the latter we 
348 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

are perhaps indebted for the preservation of 
the magnificent painting which was the 
cause of his premature death. Accidentally 
passing through Parma, he stopped to see 
and to admire it, at a time when the ecclesi- 
astics, whose taste in the fine arts does not 
appear to have been improved in the inter- 
val, were about to efface it. Titian, who is 
said to have parodied Alexander's speech to 
Diogenes, and to have declared that " If he 
were not Titian, he would desire to be Cor- 
reggio," diverted these holy Vandals from 
their intention. 

In this " Assumption " at Parma, Correg- 
gio has imagined that the drum of the cupola 
embraces the space on earth in which stood 
the sepulchre of the Virgin. 

For this purpose, upon the octagon itself, 
from which the vault springs, runs a balus- 
trade, above which rises a candelabrum at 
each of the eight angles, with a number of 
boys between engaged in lighting tapers or 
burning incense and odoriferous herbs. On 
the balustrade, as in Giulio Romano's pic- 
ture of the same subject in the apse of Ve- 
rona Cathedral, and in front of the base of 
the cupola, stand the Apostles, looking up- 
wards with astonishment, as if dazzled by the 
349 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

light of the celestial host who transport the 
Virgin; and above, heaven appears open to 
receive her. The angel Gabriel descends to 
meet her, and the several hierarchies of the 
blessed circle around him. In the penden- 
tives of the cupola are represented the four 
Protectors of the city of Parma — St. Hil- 
ary, looking down upon it with an expres- 
sion of kindness and protection; St. Ber- 
nard, kneeling and imploring pity on its be- 
half; St. Thomas, attended by angels, some 
bearing exotic fruits, emblematical of the 
Apostle's labours in India; and St. John the 
Baptist, holding a lamb, while angels dart 
around, as it were, through clouds.. 

At first, and seen from below, this work 
appears extremely confused, but with great 
amenity of colours. Professor Phillips at- 
tributed this confusion to the destruction of 
the colours and consequent relief of the parts, 
and the blotches of white produced where 
the plaster has fallen, to the insufficient roof- 
ing of the dome. 

The Baptistery commenced in 1196 by Ben- 
edetto Antelami, stands a little to the south- 
west of the Duomo, and is perhaps one of 
the grandest in Italy, its details showing the 
widest departure from anything to which 
350 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

we are used north of the Alps; yet it illus- 
trates those false principles of design which 
protrude themselves in every point of a 
building of its age in that country. Exter- 
nally it is an octagon, six stories in height, 
the four upper ones being merely used to 
conceal a dome covered by a low-pitched 
wooden roof. 

In most of the stages, within and without, 
the ornamental arcade has been rejected for 
the ornamental colonnade, the pillarets sup- 
porting an entablature, instead of a range of 
round or pointed arches, by which means a 
decided air of squareness and horizontality 
is imparted to the mass. Externally, the 
material is white marble, while within, the 
attached shafts supporting the ribs of the 
dome vault are alone of a costly nature, the 
walls to a great extent being left in their 
naked brick. 

In each cardinal side of the octagon ex- 
cept the east is a round-headed doorway, 
rich in sculpture and most interesting icono- 
graphically. Within the tympanum of the 
northern doorway is the Epiphany, while 
immediately below it, in the lintel, are three 
subjects from the life of St. John the Bap- 
tist. In the sides of this doorway the Gene- 
351 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

alogy of our Lord, or Radix Jesse, is mi- 
nutely sculptured. The tympanum of the 
western portal exhibits the Last Judgement, 
which subject is continued into the lintel, 
the imposts bearing small groups illustrative 
of the Miracles and the Corporal Works of 
Mercy. In the southern doorways the sculp- 
ture, which, as far as I could decipher it, 
represents the overthrow of the Egyptians in 
the Red Sea, and a crowned head of our 
Lord between the Baptist and the Agnus 
Dei, is confined to the tympanum and lintel. 

Over the entrance to a house opposite this 
doorway I read, Heic albo inscribuntur 
nomina neophytorum. 

Within, the Baptistery has sixteen sides, 
partly panelled in tall arcades of round 
arches, and two rows of colonnades similar 
to those employed externally, and between 
each of these sixteen sides is a slender shaft 
from which the ribs of the dome spring with 
an effect truly graceful from their classic 
character. 

This Baptistery at Parma is a collegiate 
church, having a chapter of six canons and a 
provost, besides inferior officers, and as it 
is furnished with an altar and stalls, presents, 
with its frescoed walls and dome, an appear- 
352 



PARMA 

Interior of the Baptistery 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ance of great richness and splendour. The 
original font is a huge octagon of yellowish 
red marble, enclosing the usual quatrefoiled 
compartment for the officiant. A smaller 
font, or, at least, what is now used as such, 
and which stands in a corner of the Baptis- 
tery, has arabesques in low relief with foli- 
age and small birds on its bowl. About four 
feet in diameter, it is supported on the back 
of a crouching monster with snarling jaws, 
in the hollow of whose back is perched a 
small bird, while the head of a nondescript 
beast, flattened beneath the weight of his 
body, appears between his forepaws. 

Fiacenza 

Of all the North Italian church interiors 
with which I am acquainted, I can recall 
none so grand or so awe-inspiring as that of 
the cathedral at Piacenza. Doubly so did it 
appear when, at six o'clock in the morning 
of the Sunday after Corpus Christi, I first 
set foot within its majestic nave, whose sand- 
stone grit columns of enormous height and 
girth are relieved from an appearance of 
heaviness by a narrow band of varied foliage 
in the capitals. Although the arcades are so 
lofty, the upper stories are by no means 
353 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

starved. On the contrary, the triforium 
stage, composed of a triple arcade grouped 
beneath a pointed arch, beautifully moulded 
in brick, with its tympanum unpierced, is, 
as well as the clerestory, where we find sin- 
gle lancet lights, extraordinarily well devel- 
oped. The six round arches composing the 
great arcade are gathered up into pairs by 
grand half-columns, with boldly foliaged 
capitals, carrying the arches which span the 
church transversely, and descending to the 
floor; while from a lesser shaft which rests 
upon the capital of each alternate column 
spring the brick ribs dividing the great dom- 
ical vaults into six cells. As at Modena, the 
absence of the horizontal line is very notice- 
able, there being no string-course below 
either the triforium or the clerestory. The 
only relief to the red brickwork between the 
triforium and the arches separating the nave 
from its aisles is a small niched figure. The 
north aisle is lighted by small round-headed 
windows placed high up in the wall; those 
in the opposite one are larger, while the 
arches which span these portions of the 
church transversely spring on the wall side 
from half-columns, whose capitals recall the 
Corinthian of older days. 
354 



PIACENZA 

Cathedral, from the Northeast 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

A curious feature in the nave of Piacenza 
Cathedral is that the last bay on either side 
is much taller than the rest, the top of its 
arch being on a level with half the height of 
the triforium. These arches open into the 
western aisles of the transepts, Piacenza be- 
ing one of the few great Italian churches 
planned with double aisles to the cross arm. 

Each aisle, as well as the nave of the tran- 
sept — if I may so speak — terminates apsi- 
dally, and as the choir and its aisles end sim- 
ilarly, the plan of Piacenza Cathedral may 
be described as both parallel and transverse 
triapsidal. 

Another singular feature is the manner 
in which the great octagonal lantern is not 
carried over all three arches opening from 
the space beneath it into the transepts, but 
only over those admitting to their central 
and eastern divisions. An arcade similar to 
that employed in the triforium of the nave 
surmounts these two arches, but correspond- 
ing in position to the clerestory. Most 
grandly developed are these three-bayed 
transepts of Piacenza. Here the columns 
of the two bays next the lantern are of the 
same height as those in the nave, while the 
remaining bay is lower, and surmounted by 
355 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

a pointed arch enclosing three small ones, 
with the tympanum gracefully patterned in 
red and yellow brick. 

As may be imagined, the views in these 
transepts at Piacenza, whether looking cross- 
wise or due north and south, are grand 
beyond description, and I shall never forget 
the impression they made upon me as I sat 
in one of the dusky recesses of the northern 
arm to hear Chapter Mass on the Sunday 
and Monday mornings of my visit, listening 
to the organ as it echoed through the long 
drawn aisles in the interludes to the Gre- 
gorian Chant or in the Ofifertorium, which, 
on Sunday, was " The Heavens are Telling," 
from Haydn's Creation, and watching the 
clouds of incense as they rose from the thu- 
rible of the acolyte, who was waiting at the 
door of the sacristy until it was time to make 
his appearance at the altar for the Canon 
of the Mass, in company with the cerofers. 

I should have said that the organ at Pia- 
cenza Cathedral stands with its long array 
of dull gold pipes unenclosed by a case in 
the apse, and immediately behind the rere- 
dos, a very graceful complete Gothic con- 
ception of metal composed of seven gabled 
compartments, each holding two rows of 
356 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

figures, and flanked by octagonal turrets, 
mounting up into crocketed spirelets. The 
grandly raised choir, rich in frescoes by Lu- 
dovico Caracci and Procaccini, has one great 
vaulting bay subdivided like those of the 
nave into two lesser ones, and is aisled. 
Here, however, the triforium arcade has two 
triplets of arcades beneath a semicircular 
arch to each bay, while the round-headed 
clerestory windows are pierced eccentrically 
in the wall, i. e. close to the shaft which runs 
up from the capital of the great isolated col- 
umns of the arcade, separating the choir from 
its aisles, to the point of the vaulting. 

Such are the most prominent features of 
the Cathedral at Piacenza, which, purged as 
it has been of pseudo-classical disfigure- 
ments, stands forth as fine and pure an exam- 
ple of early Gothic as any in all Lombardy. 

Cremona 

Another cathedral with an aisle on either 
side of its transept is Cremona, the building 
of whose nave was spread over the greater 
part of the twelfth century, owing to constant 
embroilments of the Cremonese with the in- 
habitants of neighbouring cities. 
357 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Here the transepts would appear to have 
been afterthoughts, as they were not com- 
menced until 1342. There is no central lan- 
tern, and the upper stories of the nave are 
carried past the transepts, completely ig- 
noring their existence. Consequently it was 
only found possible to make the naves of 
the transepts, if such they may be called, 
equal in breadth to one bay of the nave ar- 
cade. Such a cutting ofif of the upper parts 
of the transepts from the rest of the church 
produces, it is almost needless to observe, a 
very singular but at the same time very sol- 
emn and awe-inspiring effect. 

The interior of Cremona Cathedral, 
which is unusually lofty for its width, has 
been rather drastically treated by an archi- 
tect of the Renaissance, who by flutings and 
capitals painted on them in perspective and 
gilt has tortured what must have originally 
been an impressive array of ponderous, but 
not lofty, cylindrical columns into pseudo- 
Classical ones. These " beautifyings " are, 
however, to a great extent concealed by 
magnificent tapestries which, in combination 
with lavishly applied wall paintings and 
sumptuous furniture, produce an ensemble 
which it is impossible not to admire for the 
358 



CREMONA 
Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

fine and subdued tone of colour which pre- 
vails throughout. 

Externally, the Cathedral which soars 
grandly above the houses that so closely en- 
viron it, is a truly noble example of brick- 
work, though the transept fronts, where an 
enormous screen wall is carried up high 
above the roofs, and pierced with rose 
windows of elaborate character, but of no 
possible use, are an example of that sham 
construction displayed by so many other 
buildings of their age and class in Italy, 
and also in certain parts of Germany/ 

The four most celebrated towers in Italy 
are those of Pisa (called the Leaning 
Tower), of the Duomo at Florence, of 
Modena (styled the Ghirlandina from the 
bronze garland which surrounds the weather- 
cock) , and that called the Torazzo or Torac- 
cio, which from the boldness displayed in the 
design, and the height to which it was car- 
ried, has obtained for Cremona its architec- 
tural celebrity 

Unus Petrus est in Roma 
Una turris in Cremona. 

''The "screen fa9ades " of Brunswick, Magdeburg and 
Halberstadt exemplify this. 

359 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

This campanile of Cremona Cathedral is 
said to have been carried up to the square 
part in the space of two years, and is the 
highest of all the towers in the North of 
Italy, reaching the elevation of 396 feet. 
Four hundred and ninety-eight steps lead to 
the summit. Of the whole height 264 feet 
are given to the square part, which is six 
diameters high. This is divided into seven 
stories by cornices or string-courses of inter- 
secting arches, and the three upper ones are 
lightened by apertures with columns and 
pointed arches. 

Above the square tower are two octangu- 
lar stories, gathered in to support a pyra- 
mid, the whole so graduating that it par- 
takes of the character of a spire. Great 
skill is displayed in the construction of the 
upper octagon, or rather monopteral Temple 
of sixteen small columns, on which the sur- 
mounting pyramid is placed. Two staircases 
contained in the thickness of the wall lighten 
the structure without impairing its durabil- 
ity, and four others lead from the last story 
to the summit. 

This campanile was begun in 1283, in 
celebration of the peace concluded that 
year between Cremona, Milan, Piacenza and 

360 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Brescia, the expense being borne by the 
Guelphs, or partisans of the Pope, not only 
of Cremona, but of all Northern Italy. In 
15 18 the bells were cast which hang in it, 
at which time we may conclude the octag- 
onal cupola was added. Once this Torazzo 
at Cremona had a chance of acquiring a 
celebrity apart from its architectural one. 
In 1414 the Emperor Sigismund and the 
Pope visited the city, then subject to the 
usurped authority of Gabrino Fondulo. 
The Signore was cruel and treacherous, but 
wise and talented. The Sovereign and Pon- 
tiff consulted with him, and, by his advice, 
Constance was fixed upon as the place where 
the great Council was to be held for the 
purpose of restoring peace to Christendom, 
Sigismund, besides other marks of favour, 
giving to Gabrino the authority of a vicar 
of the empire in Cremona. Gabrino invited 
his illustrious guests to mount the Torazzo 
and enjoy the prospect, he alone accompany- 
ing them. They all descended in safety; but 
when Gabrino was brought to the scaffold 
at Milan in 1425, he said that only one thing 
in the course of his life did he regret — that 
he had not had sufficient courage to push 
Pope and Emperor over the battlements, in 

361 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

order that he might have profited by the con- 
fusion which such a catastrophe would have 
occasioned in Italy. 

The Baptistery, a large plain octagonal 
building, stands to the south-west of the 
Cathedral. It is entirely of brick. Inside, 
each face of the octagon has an arcade of 
three tall Romanesque arches below two 
plain corbelled stages pierced with windows. 
The ribless vault is octagonal, of red brick, 
and, from its great simplicity, very impress- 
ive. It is crowned by a small open lantern. 
There are three altars, and the font which 
occupies the centre of the building is hewn 
out of a single block of red Verona marble. 
What is very rare in this class of edifices 
is a fine projecting porch with the shafts 
standing on lions, which, as is unusual, are 
not crushing other animals. 

Opinions differ respecting the date of this 
Baptistery at Cremona, some assigning it 
to the eighth, others to the following cen- 
tury. 

The Certosa 

It goes without saying that I broke the 
railway journey from Milan to Pavia by a 
visit to the most splendid monastery in the 
362 



WEST FRONT OF THE CERT05A, 
NEAR PAVIA 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

world, the Certosa, commonly called that 
of the Beata Virgine delle Grazie. Alight- 
ing at the quiet little station, and walk- 
ing about a mile, nearly all round the mon- 
astic precincts, past irrigating canals and 
ditches (innocently startling many a lizard 
and frog with which the meadows teem), 
I reached the entrance gatehouse. 

Casting my eye over the wonderful Re- 
naissance western facade, commenced in 1473 
by Ambrogio da Fossano, otherwise known 
as the painter, Borgognone, I was lost in 
wonder at the amount of labour bestowed 
upon it. But while fascinated by the beauty 
of the details, it was impossible not to feel 
that, considering the labour involved, its real 
effect is less than that produced by any other 
style of decoration. It is, in fact, applying 
to an exterior what really is the true attri- 
bute of interior art, and applying to an exte- 
rior a hard and durable material appropriate 
only to the fanciful sketchiness permissible 
with more perishable materials. The fail- 
ure of an attempt to apply this style of dec- 
oration to an exterior led to a most unfor- 
tunate reaction in the opposite direction. 
The architect of the day, finding that the 
desired effect failed to be produced, and not 
363 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

perceiving that the failure was in the mode 
of doing it, and not in the thing itself, 
crowded the interior of the churches with 
the great Orders which the Romans designed 
and destined chiefly for external decoration; 
thus, not only was a most offensive inappro- 
priateness the result, but these buildings be- 
came dwarfed and their designs cramped, 
to an extent which is often too plainly ap- 
parent. 

Though it cannot, according to all archi- 
tectural rules, be considered good as a com- 
position (for a wholesome law is trans- 
gressed, as the main part of the decoration 
and sculpture is confined to the lower 
stages), yet the detail is so exquisite and re- 
fined as to completely disarm criticism; in- 
deed, the whole exterior, with its picturesque 
assemblage of steeples and graceful arcades, 
in reminiscence of early Lombard Gothic, 
carried completely round the upper parts of 
the structure, is one of infinite charm, par- 
ticularly as I viewed it under conditions of 
a cloudless blue sky. 

The body of the church belongs to the 

last years of the fourteenth century, and, as 

might be expected, has all the faults of the 

buildings raised at that time in Italy, yet its 

364 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

faults are overlooked in the rich and elabo- 
rate furniture and decorations of the inte- 
rior, which by their profusion absolutely be- 
wilder the visitor. Indeed, I know nothing 
more splendid than the coup d'ceil presented 
by the choir, seen through those superb mid- 
seventeenth-century screens, both to the east 
and west of the crossing, separating the tran- 
sept from the nave and choir. The intarsia- 
tures to the stalls, executed in i486, and the 
beautiful carving to them; the extraordinary 
richness of the east end; the altarpieces in 
the chapels which fringe the nave, almost 
every one of them containing the production 
of some great master;^ the statuary on the 
nave piers; the frescoes which cover the 
choir; and that rara avis in Italy, the bril- 
liant stained-glass; all exhibit a prodigality 
and thought of invention which tempt us to 
overlook the shortcomings in the architec- 
tonic details of the building. 

We have then in this Certosa and its 
cloistral appendages, a group of buildings 
of great richness, with varied details, many 
of them very beautiful, but with an absence 

* It is worthy of observation that all the altars in the nave 
chapels of the Certosa are placed on the east side of the chapels, 
and not north and south, as usual in Italy. 

365 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of repose. Its architects borrowed details 
and features without scruple from the ri- 
val styles known to them. Thus we find the 
graceful arcaded galleries surrounding the 
upper part of the semicircular apses which 
are familiar to us in the Lombard churches 
of Bergamo and Pavia, and of which exam- 
ples may be found, as I have before said, 
translated into northern language at Bam- 
berg and Gelnhausen, at Limburg and 
Cologne. 

Circular arches prevail in the windows, 
but the Pointed form is also represented. 
The turrets, with their spire-like cappings, 
impart a considerable effect of verticality, 
while the enriched cornices assert the hori- 
zontal principle. The elaborate structure 
— half tower, half dome — which rises at 
the intersection of the cross, has a special 
interest, as being one of the few examples 
by which we are enabled to form an opin- 
ion of what might have been the treatment 
of the dome by the Italian architects of the 
Middle Ages. 

Taken altogether, it is impossible to praise 

the Certosa, for it is inconsistent, and purity 

of style is lacking in its details. Still, parts 

are entitled to admiration, notably the deli- 

366 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

cate arabesques in the pilasters of the chief 
facade, which, though more appropriate to 
the painter's than to the sculptor's art, ex- 
hibit a refinement of design and execution 
which has seldom been surpassed. 

Perhaps no other building illustrates more 
clearly the confusion of ideas which ushered 
in the Italian Renaissance. The movement 
was one of vigorous individuality in details 
without the authority of a strict general de- 
sign. Its originators rejoiced in the belief 
that their artistic creations were unrivalled, 
and strove after originality of ornamentation 
rather than after that classical correctness 
so prized and over-estimated by the later 
architects. At the same time they turned 
their eyes to the antique as the real shrine 
of all that was best in art, in their endeavour 
to engraft classic details on medieval plans. 

Pavia 

It was an intensely hot afternoon when the 
omnibus which conveyed me from the sta- 
tion to the Albergo Tre Re turned into the 
main street of Pavia, where Saturday bustle 
was intensified by Italian vivacity, and by 
the embroilments and blockings up of the 
367 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

way, aggravated by the absence of all sem- 
blance of footpath; for the Pavanese, like 
the dwellers in many another old Italian 
town that has not felt " the march of modern 
improvement," enjoy in perfection what the 
Frenchman styles " la totalite de la pave." 

The principal street of Pavia runs due 
north and south, from the castle at the former 
to the covered bridge, which, built late in 
the fifteenth century by Gian Galeazzo, the 
founder of the present Duomo, bestrides the 
Ticino at the latter. This, one of the sev- 
eral great Italian rivers mentioned by 
Claudian, is a tributary of the Po, and ex- 
tremely rapid. It is therefore somewhat 
difficult to know why Silius Italicus has 
represented it as so very gentle and still a 
river in the beautiful description he has 
left us of it: 

Caeruleas Ticinus aquas, et stagna vadoso 
Perspicuus servat turbari nescia fundo, 
Ac nitidum viridi lente trahit amne liquorem: 
Vix credas labi; ripis tarn mitis opacis 
Argutos inter volucrum certamina, cantus, 
Somniferam ducit lucenti gurgite lympham. 

In the quarter of the city which lies to the ; 
west of this main street, we find the unfin- 
ished and scarcely to be admired Cathedral, 

368 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and the fourteenth-century Gothic Church 
of St. Pantaleone.* On the opposite side are 
the Lombardo-Romanesque St. Michele, and 
the Gothic St. Francesco, while at the ex- 
treme north end of the place is the equally 
celebrated Romanesque St. Pietro in Cielo 
d' Oro, whose study, together with that of 
St. Michele, engrossed the greater part of 
my attention during my stay in Pavia. 

The exact date of the construction of St. 
Michele is not accurately known. Mention 
is first made of it by Paulus Diaconus, who 
incidentally relates that, in 66 1, Unulfus 
sought refuge in this church from the ven- 
geance of King Grimoaldus. The proba- 
bility is that it had only been recently fin- 
ished at that date; because the particular 
veneration for the Archangel Michael, 
which commenced in Apulia in 503, did not 
reach Lombardy till a century later; in ad- 
dition to which we find that, during the 
whole of the sixth century, the inhabitants 

* S. Pantaleone, alias Sta. Maria del Carmine, is a red-brick 
church with a graceful campanile surmounted by a rather taller 
spire than usual. The east end is remarkable, being square, 
and lighted by a rose above two lancets, whose mouldings dis- 
play a graceful manipulation of brick. St. Francesco has a 
western facade which may be regarded as a model of elegant 
distribution of parts. 

369 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of Pavia were engrossed in the construction 
of their Cathedral, and it is hardly likely 
they would have carried on two works of 
similar magnitude simultaneously. 

The nucleus of St. Michele at Pavia may 
date from the middle of the ninth century, 
but it cannot be said to have assumed its 
present form until the early part of the 
twelfth, if as soon as that. In its main por- 
tions St. Michele is very similar to St. Am- 
brose's at Milan, the arrangement of the 
arcades and triforium being essentially the 
same, while the same flatness and squareness 
is perceptible in the compound piers and 
their capitals. 

It is through such Lombardic works as 
this that we must trace the connection with 
the basilican type of Rhenish Germany. In 
Italy this form is naturally reproduced in 
most of the ecclesiastical edifices of this pe- 
riod. 

St. Michele at Pavia dates from between 
720 and 750, and St. Castor at Coblenz was 
consecrated in 836, during the reign of Louis 
the Pious, who lived much at the former 
city. 

One of the most charming features which 
the churches of the Rhenish valleys and the 
370 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Lombard plains have in common is that se- 
ries of external arcaded galleries which, at 
first only used under the roofs of the octag- 
onal lanterns with which their architects 
almost universally crowned the intersections 
of the four arms of the cross, were subse- 
quently carried along the sides of the 
churches under the roof of the nave and 
aisles, and also — where the taste of it is 
more questionable — under the sloping eaves 
of the roof of the principal fagade. 

In the style of which I am now speaking, 
there is nothing so common or so beautiful 
as these arcaded galleries. They have all 
the shadow which a cornice imparts without 
its inconvenient projections, and the pillar- 
ets, with their elegant capitals and light ar- 
chivolts, seem to adumbrate all that sparkle 
and brilliancy for which the perfected Gothic 
was destined to become so celebrated. In- 
deed so beautiful are they that we are not 
surprised to find them so universally adopted ; 
and their discontinuance when the Pointed 
Style had become settled was perhaps one of 
the greatest losses sustained by architectural 
art in those days. It is true they would have 
been quite incompatible with the thin walls 
and light piers of the Pointed styles; but it 
371 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

may be safely asserted that no feature which 
the perfected Gothic introduced was equally 
beautiful with these galleries which they 
superseded. 

Few ancient Italian churches surpass this 
of St. Michele at Pavia in interest. If, in 
common with other churches of its age, it 
fails from over-heaviness of parts and a cer- 
tain clumsiness of construction, and a defi- 
ciency in that refinement requisite for a gen- 
uine work of art, it is certainly not without 
its value as an expression of power. 

Built externally of stone, internally mainly 
of red brick, St. Michele is a cruciform 
basilica, 189 feet long by 81 feet wide, ter- 
minating in a semicircular apse and having 
a lesser apse on the eastern side of each tran- 
sept. An octagonal lantern, formed by pen- 
dentives from the square of the plan, crowns 
the intersection, and a campanile, of which 
the greater portion is of very late date, rises 
between the north transept and the choir. 

The west front is probably the prototype 
of all the others built in Lombardy down to 
the extinction of the Pointed style. Of ex- 
ceeding richness and grandeur are the three 
portals ornamented with carved figures and 
groups derived from Christian, pagan and 
372 



PAVIA 
West Front of St. Michele 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Scandinavian sources, which together with 
some merely introduced for the purposes of 
decoration, afford a good example of their 
peculiar style. 

The portal of the Northern transept, as 
well as a blocked doorway on the south side 
of the nave, will afford the student of sculp- 
tured ornament a mine of research, surpass- 
ing as they do some of our latest Norman 
examples in the richness of their decorations 
and wealth of iconography. 

I have more than once alluded to that 
most beautiful part of these Lombard 
churches, their eastern ends. 

At St. Michele this apse, with its gallery, 
the well developed transept, and the octag- 
onal lantern, constitutes a highly artistic and 
beautiful group. Usually in Italian churches 
the open gallery under the roof of the apse 
is a simple range of arcades; here, however, 
it is broken into three great divisions by 
coupled shafts rising from the ground, and 
these again are subdivided by single shafts 
running in like manner through the whole 
height of the apse. The gallery thus not 
only becomes a part of the whole design, 
instead of looking as if it might have been 
added as an after-thought, but a pleasing va- 
373 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

riety is also given, which contributes not a 
little to the elegance of the ensemble. There 
is a descent of several steps from the western 
portals into the nave, which, owing to its 
greater elevation, is more imposing than that 
of St. Ambrose at Milan.^ The grandly 
raised choir too, vaulted at the same height 
as the nave, conducts the eye into the apse, 
where Andrino da Edesia's painting of the 
*' Coronation of the Virgin " in the conch 
terminates the vista very impressively. 

The nave is divided into three stories of 
pier arches, triforium arcades and small 
clerestory, and had, when first built, a 
wooden roof. The great piers which run 
up between the two pair of bays into which 
this portion of the church is divided, are late 
additions rendered necessary when the vault 
took the place of the wooden ceiling. These 
two great compartments are vaulted quadri- 
partitely between the transverse arch thrown 
across from the great piers above mentioned. 
The transepts have simple barrel-shaped, 
roofs, while that of the bay intermediary,! 
between the lantern and the apse, is quadri- 

' Both churches underwent important structural changes 
about the same time, and their internal elevations have severalj 
features in common, notably the triforia. 

374 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

partite, having its brick cells concealed by 
plaster. Both transepts and apse have their 
walls relieve by shallow arcades on single 
shafts with foliaged capitals, the central and 
two outer arcades of the latter being pierced 
with round-headed windows, whose deep 
splays are lined by pillarets producing an 
effect of much richness. 

The short sturdy compound piers support- 
ing the four arches opening into the nave 
aisles stand upon rather tall bases, cylin- 
drical, massive and quite plain, and their 
capitals are profusely ornamented with forms 
taken from the local fauna and flora, the 
acanthus being used, but less conventionally 
than with the Greeks, and less richly than 
with the Romans. 

The bases of the piers supporting the east- 
ern arch of the lantern, which is vaulted in 
brick without any stone ribs, are much raised 
from the level of the nave, since they stand 
on the pavement of the choir. This is 
grandly elevated above the crypt upon a 
podium or raised platform reached by stair- 
cases of fourteen steps each, and extending 
'a short way into the space beneath the lan- 
tern. The front of the crypt, towards the 
nave, is relieved by arcade work on pillarets, 
375 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

whose capitals, as well as the lintels they 
carry, exhibit good foliaged ornament, but 
the ancient ambon which once surmounted 
it has been disturbed, though fragments of 
it are preserved in the north transept. 

Late on Saturday evening I paid a second 
visit to St. Michele, when its interior pre- 
sented an aspect of truly awful solemnity in 
the fast gathering darkness, the voices of 
some poor women and children who were 
gathered about the altar in the south tran- 
sept singing their Ave Maris Stella and 
other hymns as they awaited the priest who 
was to perform the office of Benediction, 
alone breaking the stillness which brooded 
over the pile. 

Such simple hymn-singing I found the 
custom in many of the churches, which in 
certain places remain open to as advanced an 
hour as ten. 

As a rule the parish churches are closed 
from twelve o'clock, when the Angelus bell 
is tolled, until about five, though I believe 
the cathedrals remain open throughout the 
day. 

Among the more prominent features of 
Romanesque as exhibited in the other Pa- 
vian churches of St. Pietro in Cielo d' Oro, 
376 



m\ 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Teodoro, St. Giovanni in Borgo, and St. 
Lanfranco, all of which deserve the most 
careful study at the hands of the ecclesiol- 
ogist/ it should be noticed that, whether 
forming actual porticoes and galleries, or 
closed up and applied merely as decoration, 
the arcades are, as a rule, small in propor- 
tion to the building itself, and instead of oc- 
cupying the centre width of the front or 
other elevation, were mostly inserted into 
distinct compartments of it, slightly recessed 
within the general face of the wall, so that 
the plain spaces between them assume the 
appearance of buttresses, or, when narrow, 
of plain pilasters continued up to the cor- 
nice of the gable or roof, and cutting through 
whatever string-courses or other horizontal 
mouldings (if there are any) divide the sev- 
eral stories or stages of the building. 

These buttress-like surfaces are occasion- 
ally more or less enriched, sometimes almost 
to excess, thus producing vertical lines of 
ornament continued the entire height of the 
structure, as in the fagade of St. Michele. 

When, as was not unfrequently done, these 
surfaces are made wider at the angles of the 

' * All these churches are fully described and illustrated in 
Dartein, Etudes sur V Architecture Lombarde. 

377 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

front than elsewhere, they give an air of 
repose and of great solidity to it, serving, 
as it were, as a frame to the architectural 
decoration. Among the other peculiarities 
of this style, that arising from small open 
galleries immediately beneath the eaves of 
the roof is too remarkable to be overlooked, 
especially in gabled fronts, where such ar- 
cades follow the slope of the roof itself, the 
columns being successively elevated one above 
another on steps (so that the base of those 
supporting the centre arch are above the 
lower arches), as at St. Michele and St. 
Pietro in Cielo d' Oro, or else by placing 
the columns on the same horizontal line and 
gradually increasing their height, as in the 
west front of Pisa Cathedral. 

Then there is that curious localism, the 
making an upper cornice or border of very 
small interlacing arches, or rather of mould- 
ings producing that appearance. 

We do not often meet with pinnacles. 
When they are introduced, they have the 
appearance of being set on the part they rise 
above, being separated from it by horizontal 
mouldings; besides which they are generally 
low, and somewhat resemble pedestals. 

Such pinnacles may be found surmount- 
378 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ing the pilaster-like buttresses, and cutting 
through either an horizontal cornice or the 
sloping ones of a gable, as in the front of 
the Cathedral at Monza. 

The church of St. Pietro in Cielo d' Oro, 
so called because of the magnificence with 
which its apse was decorated, derives a lustre 
apart from its architectural one, enshrining 
as it does the relics of St. Augustine. After 
remaining for the greater part of the last 
century in a state of desecration, St. Pietro 
has been restored, and now takes its place 
among those numerous examples of Roman- 
esque architecture with which the plains of 
Lombardy are so richly bestrewn. 

In the annals of Pavia frequent mention 
is made of this church, whose importance 
appears to have almost equalled that of St. 
Michele. It was King Luitprandus who 
brought hither in 725 the relics of St. Au- 
gustine, and it is from this date that the fame 
of the church may be said to have com- 
menced, the transportation of the Saint's re- 
mains being an event sufficiently important 
to at once set in motion the restoration of 
the older fabric and the installation of a 
monastery. 

The body of St. Augustine, who died in 
379 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

430, was removed from Hippo, a see suffra- 
gan to Carthage, during the Arian persecu- 
tions, when the Catholic clergy, being ban- 
ished by King Thrasimund to Sardinia, car- 
ried the relic with them. Here it remained 
until in the eighth century King Luitpran- 
dus purchased it from the inhabitants, who, 
exposed to the constant invasion of the Sara- 
cens, could no longer insure safety to the 
pilgrims who resorted to the shrine. Under 
the protection of the great Bishop of Hippo 
the Monastery of St. Pietro in Cielo d' Oro 
seems to have entered upon a brilliant ca- 
reer. St. Odo, the second abbot of Cluny, 
was lodged in this monastery during his 
sojourn at Pavia in the retinue of King 
Hugues. St. Mayeul, who came several 
times to the city, particularly interested him- 
self in the same religious house, at the head 
of which he placed, acting under the Pope, 
an abbot of his own choice. Thus the Mon- 
astery of St. Pietro in Cielo d' Oro found 
itself a dependency of Cluny. In 978 the 
Archbishop of Ravenna, Gerbertus, presided 
at a Council here. Several charters of popes 
and emperors confirmed the possessions and 
privileges of the monastery, which depended 
directly upon the sovereign pontifif. 
380 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Like St. Michele, St. Pietro in Cielo was 
situated in the immediate neighbourhood of 
a royal palace, as appears from the follow- 
ing passage in a charter given in 1004 to the 
Emperor Henry II: " Monasterio Sancti 
Petri quod dicitur coelum aureum juxta nos- 
trum papense palatum." A dispute which 
arose between the Pavians and the soldiers 
of the Emperor, a dispute which terminated 
in the burning of the city, had at that time 
obliged the Emperor to take refuge in his 
suburban palace. 

But of all the historical evidences relating 
to St. Pietro in Cielo the most interesting 
dates from 1132. In that year on the 9th of 
May the church was solemnly consecrated by 
Pope Innocent II. As its actual structure 
belongs to an advanced period of Lombard 
architecture, the consecration of 1132 marks, 
without doubt, the time of its completion, a 
presumption which finds support in the com- 
parative examination of the churches built at 
Pavia during the course of the twelfth cen- 
tury. Thus we possess, in regard to the com- 
pletion of one of the chief Lombard churches 
of the city, a date on which reliance may be 
placed. 

The value of such a datum is moreover 
381 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

confirmed by the absence of authentic in- 
formation about St. Michele and St. Gio- 
vanni in Borgo. Also the fact that St. Pie- 
tro in Cielo was consecrated in 1132 obliges 
it to be considered as the basis of a chrono- 
logical classification of the Pavian churches 
in the Lombard style. 

The popular opinion, accepted by Sacchi, 
who rolls the tide of time as far back as the 
reign of Luitprandus will not now bear ex- 
amination. 

The same origin was admitted by Robo- 
lini in the first volume of his Annals; but 
later, better informed, this conscientious his- 
torian did not hesitate to retract it; he was 
also the first to express the opinion that St. 
Pietro, consecrated in 1132, had only just 
then been rebuilt. 

St. Pietro in Cielo d' Oro is built chiefly 
of brick, stone being only employed in the 
isolated piers, buttresses of the fagade, door- 
ways, etc. All the rest — walls, arches, 
vaults, engaged columns, lateral buttresses — 
is in brick. The small round-headed clere- 
story windows have an external archivolt 
composed of three rows of bricks, two of 
them placed flatwise, and one arranged in a 
series of small lozenges moulded in relief. 
382 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The same system of construction and decora- 
tion appears in the apse windows of St. La- 
zaire near Pavia, a small church whose 
foundation dates from the middle of the 
twelfth century. This analogy confirms the 
date which I have assigned to St. Pietro in 
Cielo, in relying on the fact of its consecra- 
tion by Pope Innocent II. 

In size this church nearly equals St. Am- 
brose at Milan, and Parma Cathedral, but 
as in many respects it is very similar in style 
to St. Michele, a detailed description is 
hardly necessary. One very striking feature 
is the narthex, which opens into the nave by 
an arch reaching nearly to the height of the 
great vaulting ribs, which spring between 
each bay from flat pilasters with small shafts 
on either side of them, as in some of the 
great North German minsters. There is no 
triforium, the plain wall above the arcades, 
which are loftier than those in St. Michele, 
being alone relieved by the small round- 
headed windows of the clerestory. A lan- 
tern rises at the intersection of the nave and 
transepts with the choir, which terminates 
apsidally and contains the shrine of St. Au- 
gustine, one of those monuments of the great 
which have for ages attracted, and still at- 
383 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tract, their crowds of devotees of all faiths, 
lands and tongues/ 

Perhaps in no country are the illustrious 
dead more honoured than in Italy, where, 
besides keeping alive the fame of the dust 
they enshrine, they have given scope to the 
genius of the most consummate artists of the 
golden time, and by reason of their own 
grace and beauty enjoy a renown greater 
than that which attaches to them as com- 
memorative objects. 

The shrine of St. Augustine, which has 
been restored to its rightful place in the apse 
of St. Pietro at Pavia, after a sojourn of 
nearly a century in the unfinished southern 
arm of the Cathedral, is one of the richest 
Italian works of its class, though hardly so 
well known as the others. 

It was erected in the middle of the four- 
teenth century, the artists' names being un- 
certain, though Vasari mentions it as being 
the work of Agostino and Agnolo di Siena. 

The figure subjects in the upper part of 
the shrine represent the miracles of the 

' Five of these shrines lie within a moderate radius in Northern 
and Central Italy, viz., those of St. Augustine at Pavia, St. 
Dominic at Bologna, St. Peter Martyr at Milan, the Taber- 
nacolo at Florence, and St. Donato at Arezzo 

384 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Saint, those in the gablets the miracles 
worked through him after his death. The 
figure of St. Augustine himself lies nearly 
hidden from view beneath the canopy. 

The figures round him and those in panels 
on the base represent the different saints his 
Order produced. 

The larger figures standing in brackets 
represent the liberal arts and the cardinal 
virtues. The material is white marble, and 
it now stands on a modern altar of coloured 
marbles in which the remains of this great 
Latin doctor are deposited. 

The figures, which number two hundred, 
are all of the most beautiful and careful 
workmanship. 

The city of Pavia had formerly, like 
Brescia and Milan, a double cathedral, 
formed by the contiguous churches of St. 
Stefano and Sta. Maria del Popolo. 

If reliance may be placed on an inscrip- 
tion, now lost, the foundation of the latter 
dated from the reign of King Luitprandus, 
who died in 744. The origin of St. Ste- 
fano is less well known. MM. G. and D. 
Sacchi, in their Antichita romantiche d' 
Italia are of opinion that the primitive ca- 
thedral was rebuilt by St. Epiphanius after 
385 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the taking and pillage of Pavia by Odoacer 
in 471, while Rabolini ^ only makes it to 
date from the days of Luitprandus. 

A more recent writer, Signor M. C. Bram- 
billa, has, however, settled that the church 
existed in 680, and began from that time to 
serve as the Cathedral. 

At the commencement of the ninth cen- 
tury the translation to St. Stefano of the rel- 
ics of St. Sirus, the first Bishop of Pavia, 
brought about the alteration of the name of 
the church, or rather the use of a new ap- 
pellation concurrently with the old one. 
From this period the double Cathedral was 
formed by the junction of St. Stefano or 
Sirus with Santa Maria del Popolo. 

This latter, situated to the south, was used 
in winter, while St. Stefano served during 
the summer months. Twice a year the can- 
ons repaired processionally from one of 
these churches to the other. 

Towards the close of the fifteenth cen- 
tury the Pavians, following the example of 
many other cities, were seized with the de- 
sire to rebuild their cathedral, which was in 
a dangerous condition, on a grand scale. 

* Notizie appartenenti alV Storia di Pavia (1825-32). Vol. 
IV, pt. I, p. 32, et seq. 

386 



I 



PAVIA 

Interior of the Cathedral, 
Looking Southeast 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Accordingly a structure, in which the 
great feature was to be a huge central oc- 
tagon surmounted by a dome, was com- 
menced in 1488 from the designs of Cristo- 
foro Rocchi, a pupil of Bramante, and in 
that earlier phase of the Renaissance style 
which had already taken so firm a root in 
the land. But the undertaking so severely 
taxed the resources of the city that, upon the 
completion of the new choir in 1526, they 
were compelled to relinquish it, merely re- 
pairing the western portions by encasing the 
old pillars in rectangular piers composed 
of four Corinthian pilasters, surmounted by 
a very tall entablature between the capitals 
and the spring of the arches. 

At the same time all communication with 
Sta. Maria del Popolo was put an end to. 
Already it was much ill-treated, being on 
the point of falling into ruins. 

But slow progress was made with the re- 
building of Pavia Cathedral, the last piers 
of the great central area not being com- 
pleted till 1768, while the dome itself, an 
octagonal one, whose effect can only be de- 
scribed by saying that it is not very good, 
but might be worse, dates but from the last 



387 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

century. Even now the transept is lacking, 
the arch being only temporary. 

These great provincial churches in Italy 
almost rival in scale St. Paul's Cathedral, 
London, to which, internally, this Duomo 
at Pavia bears a very striking resemblance 
either in certain features or when viewed 
from certain points, more particularly when 
looking across the great octagonal central 
area towards the choir. The Italian archi- 
tect, however, has made the abutments to 
his dome angular, whereas in the London 
cathedral they are semicircular. 



388 



CHAPTER IX 

MILAN: ST. AMBROSE AND THE CATHEDRAL 

The medieval architecture of Italy has 
been grievously mistaken in regard to its 
age. With certain remarkable exceptions, 
the great towns of northern Italy underwent 
more vicissitudes in feudal times than those 
of any part of Europe; indeed, the small 
republic and independent leagues appear to 
have been more quarrelsome and mutually 
jealous than the arbitrary sovereigns of 
other countries. Then invasions of all kinds 
were rife in Italy. In Milan, where one 
would expect to see in certain buildings very 
early work, we find that Frederick Barba- 
rossa made such clean work of it when he 
destroyed the city in 1162 that the citizens 
were constrained to rebuild the whole of the 
churches with brick, incorporating such frag- 
ments of stone work as were left standing in 
their new structures. 

Thus St. Ambrose's is but a raffaccia- 
389 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

mento of the old basilica of the ninth cen- 
tury in the transitional period. Neverthe- 
less, there is much of interest in the city 
even of the later date, and the Duomo is 
most assuredly, with all its faults, a marvel 
of Christian architecture. 

It was at half-past seven on a glorious 
June morning that I caught my first view of 
the white marble forest of pinnacles of 
Milan Cathedral from the top of one of 
the tramways which ply between the city 
and Monza, where for reasons of greater 
quietude I had elected to take up my quar- 
ters rather than in the noisy, bustling capital 
of Lombardy. 

An alfresco breakfast having been en- 
joyed in front of the great apse of the Du- 
omo, I set out in quest of that church which 
covers the dust of the patron saint of Milan, 
and that of the most truly Christian emperor 
Italy had seen since Marjorian, and which 
boasts, truly or falsely, of containing the 
resting-place of the one worthy antagonist 
whom Rome sent forth to withstand the 
Gothic invader. 

One small portion of the pile lays claim 
to a date going back to the days of the Saint 



390 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

to whom it is dedicated, but of the present 
fabric the mass belongs to the days of that 
worthiest of the Karlings, Louis II, King 
and Emperor, commonly styled " the Pious." 

A fine example of that early Lombardic 
Romanesque style, brought perhaps to its 
perfection in the ninth, and resuscitated, 
with some modifications, in the twelfth cen- 
tury, to which period, for the greater part, 
the actual edifice of St. Ambrose belongs, 
its severe and simple grandeur affords a rest 
for the eye after that splendidly imagina- 
tive creation, the Duomo, the marvel and 
glory of the Lombardic metropolis. 

But of far deeper interest than the archi- 
tectural features of St. Ambrose's are the 
associations that cluster around this ex-ca- 
thedral, and which call upon us to regard 
it rather as a type or monumental abstract 
of a local ecclesiastical history fraught with 
instructive meanings. 

Of all the parts preserved from the ninth- 
century architecture of this church, the most 
important is that venerable atrium, with 
quadrangle of round arches resting on square 
piers, a genuine example of the paradisus, 
according to the early basilica plan, and 



391 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

indeed the most perfect, as well as most 
imposing, extant in Italy at this day.^ 

What so impresses us in this fine old 
structure is its character of simple and har- 
monious dignity; and the basilica itself, 
that stands removed from the busier centres 
of the city, seems more distinguishingly sev- 
ered from all profane and frivolous inter- 
ests by that forecourt, sacred to silence and 
inviting to solemn meditation. 

This remarkable feature of the more an- 
cient edifice avails also as monumental proof 
of the maintenance in practice, up to the 
second half of the ninth century at least, 
however before this period modified, of that 
primitive discipline that required public 
penance from grievous offenders, and divided 
those seeking reconciliation after notorious 
sin into so many classes, severally assigned 
their places within the sacred building: the 

' " Had St. Ambrose's been erected on the colder and stormier 
side of the Alps, a clerestory would have been added to the 
atrium, which, on the ground plan, virtually forms the nave, 
and it would have been roofed over; then the plan would have 
been nearly identical with that of one of the Northern cathedrals. 
If, besides this, there had been a baptistery at the western 
entrance, as at Novara, we should then have had a building 
with two apses — a complete German Cathedral." — Fer- 
gusson, Ancient and Medieval Architecture. 

392 



MILAN 
The Atrium of 5t. Ambrose 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

flentes, only permitted to frequent the atrium^ 
and there ask for the prayers of those who 
passed on into the basilica itself; the au- 
dientes, who might remain in the narthex 
during the rites, and in the interior during 
the sermon; the substrati, who could join 
the other worshippers, but were confined to 
the space between the portals and the pulpit, 
and had to remain prostrate; and the con- 
sistentes, who alone among the penitents 
could attend the Consecration, though not 
yet admitted to the privileges of communi- 
cants. 

That such public and systematic enforce- 
ment of the Church's power in the world 
of conscience was still among religious real- 
ities at this period is evident from the fact 
that, in the ninth century, the parochial rec- 
tors {curat!) first acquired the faculties, 
hitherto exclusively held by bishops, of re- 
ceiving reconciled sinners to communion, 
when such belonged to their respective par- 
ishes, after compliance with these expiato- 
rial duties for a penitential season. 

The gradual decay of that ancient disci- 
pline and its final extinction are now mani- 
fest in the architecture as in the life of the 
Italian Church, and form a striking exem- 
393 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

plification of the mutability of Latin Ca- 
tholicism, of the degree in which Rome her- 
self has submitted to the silent process of 
inevitable change, that seems the Heaven- 
appointed fate of all institutions where ele- 
ments of enduring life exist, correspondent 
to the law of progress that acts in humanity. 

The building of the new St. Peter's in the 
sixteenth century might be said to supply 
the last historic proof as to the mind of the 
modern Church in Rome with regard to 
these ancient observances, seeing that it was 
on that occasion deliberately to sweep away 
the entire hierarchic arrangement of the 
primitive cathedral, and that in not one de- 
sign presented or approved for the great 
basilica was the attempt made to restore the 
old atrium apparent! 

Guide books and custodi point out at St. 
Ambrose's some panels of cypress wood set 
into the bronze portals of the great western 
entrance to the church, and said to be a relic 
of the door from which that Saint repulsed 
Theodosius after the massacre at Thessa- 
lonica; but historic criticism must reject 
this claim, seeing that no material and per- 
sonal opposition to that emperor's entrance 



394 



i 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

into the former cathedral church is borne 
out by authorities. 

The very curious and various symbolism 
introduced among details of the exterior of 
this basilica round those portals and on the 
pier capitals of the atrium, where both hu- 
man and animal figures, the centaur and the 
syren, appear in the mystic circle, seem the 
result, with enlarged and more fantastic ap- 
plication, of the study of that clearer sym- 
bolism found in Roman catacombs, still fre- 
quented for devotion, though becoming 
gradually deserted, in the ninth century. 

Among these sculptured symbols in the 
portals and in the atrium we notice a relief 
of St. Ambrose with a crozier in his hand 
that terminates in a serpent's head. This 
singular object suggests analogy with a relic 
indeed unique and that attracts much notice 
inside this church. I refer to a bronze ser- 
pent placed on the summit of a column near 
the marble pulpit, once superstitiously re- 
garded as the very image, or at least made 
of the material of the image, lifted up by 
Moses in the wilderness, under which idea 
it was actually presented to an archbishop, 
Arnulph, in looi, at Constantinople, whither 



395 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

that prelate had been sent on embassy by 
Otho III. 

The antiquarian notion that it is no other 
than the serpent of iEsculapius, preserved 
from the ornaments of a temple to that god 
upon whose ruins this basilica was reared 
is now exploded; and strongest of all asso- 
ciations that attach to it is the proof of lin- 
gering Paganism, existent in ignorant minds 
even till the sixteenth century, when moth- 
ers were in the habit of invoking their idol 
(for such it had become to the Milanese 
populace) to cure their children of the dis- 
ease of worms, an abuse finally suppressed 
by St. Carlo Borromeo. In fact the " acts " 
of one of his diocesan visitations bear ref- 
erence to it: "Est quaedam superstitio ibijj 
mulierum pro infantibus morbo verminui 
laborantibus." 

The serpent associated with the Cross as 
emblematic of the triumph of Christianit 
over Paganism had indeed an authorized' 
place among sacred pomps, borne together! 
with the banner in the van of processions, 
as AUegranza tells us that in his time it usee 
so to be displayed before the processional 
cross of the clergy at Vicenza ; and the cross 
itself used of old to be emblemized by a 
396 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

serpent, for sanction of which practice the 
words of St. Ambrose in chapter ix of the 
third volume of his De Spiritu Sancto may 
be cited. " Imago enim crucis aereus serpens 
est." 

The whole body of this Church of St. 
Ambrose and its two unequal campanili 
with their stunted pyramidal roofs of the 
customary Lombard type are of red brick. 
The western gable of the church, which so 
grandly closes the view across the atrium, is 
extremely flat with its two tiers of three 
grand round-headed arches opening into re- 
cessed loggi, all richly moulded in brick. 
The piers which support the arches of the 
court are formed each of two half-columns 
attached to an oblong pillar; these are of 
stone, but all the rest is of plain or moulded 
brick. Even a casual glance at this solemn 
atrium of St. Ambrose will show the great 
capabilities the latter material offers for the 
Lombard style. 

The interest of the general traveller to 
Milan is absorbed in the Cathedral, the 
marble monster of Italy, yet I do not hesi- 
tate to affirm that there is more true archi- 
tectural principle displayed in this plain 
brick basilica of the ninth century, even 
397 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

more appropriateness (and consequent satis- 
faction to the spectator) in the material em- 
ployed, than in the vast mass of the white 
marble Duomo, the work of five hundred 
years, with its flying buttresses, its attenuated 
flamboyant windows, its grove of pinnacles, 
and roof-garden of three thousand statues. 

I speak now only of the exterior; for the 
interior of the Cathedral of Milan is inex- 
pressibly grand, though even here I am not 
disposed to quarrel with those who see more 
in the ninth-century altar and mosaics of St. 
Ambrogio and the very throne of the prim- 
itive Archbishop of Milan in which he sat 
at the extreme eastern end of the apse, in 
the midst of his eighteen suffragans, than 
in the flaunting modern stained glass and 
false roof (for it is painted in imitation of 
stone .groining, a trick which the Italians 
practised usque ad nauseam) of the more 
pretending Duomo. 

Whatever beauty may be conceded to 
these Lombard Churches, it must be allowed 
that much is owing to their general outline 
and proportions;^ for the brick used is for 

* I must except from this censure the exquisite ancient 
specimens in the transepts and aisles, most of which have a 
decided air of the Nuremburg school about them. 

398 






The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the most part of the very commonest and 
coarsest kind, and it is generally only in the 
fagade that terra-cotta enrichments are in- 
troduced. 

Since the ninth century great structural 
changes have taken place in this old Milan- 
ese basilica, but although minutely worked 
out by some archsologists, the distinction 
between the architecture of the earlier and 
that of the later ages still offers some points 
difficult of solution. 
4 The vaulted roof of the nave with its 
pointed arches, the octagonal dome between 
the nave and the choir, and the advanced 
upper story of the west front unquestionably 
belong to the twelfth century, and are the 
work of Archbishop Galdinus, a zealous 
prelate who actually died in the pulpit at 
the Cathedral of St. Tecla, after preaching 
against the heretics called Cathari, and who 
was extremely active in repairing the basil- 
ica after the time when Frederick Barba- 
rossa, in his efforts to subjugate the Lom- 
bards was ravaging the North Italian cities. 

But in the main arcades of the nave, in 

the triforia, destined for females according 

to the arrangement seen in Rome at Sta. 

Agnese and the SS. Quattro Coronati, and 

399 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

in that most remarkable feature of St. Am- 
brose the atrium, or cortile, the ninth-cen- 
tury work still survives. 

To the same period there no doubt belong 
such other characteristic details of the in- 
terior — which, by the way, underwent a 
purging from rococoisms between thirty and 
forty years ago — as the crypt, the massive 
baldachino, with porphyry columns over the 
high altar, and, most interesting of all, the 
apse with its mosaics and marble throne, 
called the Chair of St. Ambrose, of an an- 
cient form, decorated with lions at the arms 
and a simple scroll work. This chair is, 
in fact, the primitive throne of the Arch- 
bishops of Milan, on which they sat accord- 
ing to the ancient practice of the Church in 
the midst of the eighteen sufifragans of the 
province, of whom the most northern was the 
Bishop of Chur or Coire and the most south- 
ern the Bishop of Genoa. The chairs of the 
bishops were replaced in the sixteenth cen- 
tury by wood stalls for the canons, carved in 
a rich Flemish style; but students of prim- 
itive rituals and local uses must ever regret 
the loss of such a specimen of antique sim- 
plicity. 

The form of the old basilica is here some- 
400 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

what incongruously united with late Ro- 
manesque elements. 

The strong and rude pillars, ornamented 
with half-columns and pilasters, support 
pointed arched cross vaults, forming thus a 
clear transition from Romanesque to Gothic. 
Round arches, chiefly of brick, but with 
small oblongs of stone introduced irregu- 
larly by way of relief, support the similarly 
designed triforium, which is continued 
across the arches opening north and south 
from the lantern, where pendentives in the 
form of niche-like recesses conduct the eye 
from the square to the octagonal portion. 

The fagade, constructed of brick, as is the 
greater part of the building, serves to show 

, us how to produce an imposing architectural 
composition by a correct use of this mate- 
rial. 
; The ground plan, as given by Ferrario, 

"^ has all the elements of one of the Northern 
cathedrals, elongated, with a mighty atrium 
scarcely separated from the nave, and some- 
what disturbing the proportions, but at the 
same time producing a monumental effect 
almost like that of the Egyptian temples, 
though the vertical line in St. Ambrose's 
powerfully dominates. At the time of my 
401 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

visit the doorway opening from the atrium 
into the north aisle of the nave chanced to 
be open, and the effect produced by the long 
perspective of column and arch seen from 
the upper end of the basilica was remark- 
ably impressive, for the nave itself is too 
low and broad to be really pleasant, how- 
ever solemn and awe-inspiring it may be as 
a whole. 

Perhaps this effect of lowness may be 
partly attributed to the raised crypt which 
commences at the eastern arch of the lan- 
tern, and immediately in front of which 
stands the baldachino, a pedimental canopy 
with a gable on each side resting on four 
porphyry columns, said to have been saved 
from an ancient temple. Within the gable 
facing the nave is a gilt bas-relief on a blue 
ground of our Lord seated between St. 
Peter and St. Paul kneeling, and offering 
to the former two rods with a kind of key, 
and to the latter a book with the inscription, 
" Accipe Librum Sapientiae." In the gable 
turned towards the apse is a mitred saint 
dominated by a small nimbed figure with 
extended arms. This is in all likelihood St. 
Ambrose, on either side of whom are St. 
Gervasius and St. Protasius giving their pro- 
402 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tection to two other figures, one of whom is 
presenting an offering in the shape of a 
miniature baldachino. In the gable facing 
south a saint in pontificalibus is giving his 
blessing to two personages. He is crowned 
with a diadem which a hand is seen placing 
on his brow. A similar subject fills the 
northern gable with this difference, that in 
place of three male there are three female 
figures, and instead of a hand, a bird with 
out-stretched wings rests on the head of the 
central figure, whom the side ones are rep- 
resented as imploring. 

Touching this ciborium at St. Ambrose's, 
a few remarks on this instrumentum altaris 
may not be irrelevant. 

By Ki/3(opLovj of which the etymology and 
original meaning are variously interpreted 
by archaeologists, is understood the detached 
canopy of the altar, supported on four col- 
umns, and from which hung a vessel of 
costly material, containing the Sacred Ele- 
ments, used especially for the Communion 
of the sick. This ciborium besides having 
a symbolical meaning, was intended to 
shield the Holy Sacrifice and the mensa 
from the falling dust or any other possible 
impurity. 

403 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

This erection over the Holy Sacrifice had 
been in use from a very early period of 
ecclesiastical art, and fashioned variously, 
according to the prevailing style of the time. 
The roof of the ciborium altar reposed on 
four columns, standing round the altar at a 
short distance from its corners, and their 
richly decorated capitals and shafts were 
often moulded in metal. In the early pe- 
riod of Christian art, when it still clung to 
the classical forms of antiquity, these col- 
umns were simply united by architraves and 
covered by a rather flat ceiling, generally 
finished by four gables. In this case the 
horizontal band of the architrave often 
served as a support for the tapers which on 
festivals were sometimes used in great num- 
bers to illuminate the upper part of the 
altar. Besides the one now under consid- 
eration, the most ancient ciborium altars 
still preserved in this form are in the 
churches of St. Clemente and St. Giorgio 
in Velabro at Rome, at St. Mark's, Venice, 
at the Cathedral of the Patriarchate of 
Aquileia in Friuli, and in the Cathedral 
church of Parenzo in Istria. These, as well 
as most of the ciborium altars from the ear- 



404 



i 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

liest Christian times until about the twelfth 
century, were furnished between the four 
columns with full curtains, which closed in 
the detached altar-table on its four sides. 
^ This decoration of churches in the earlier 
part of the Middle Ages, when textile fab- 
rics were preferably employed, differs from 
that of the three last centuries, chiefly be- 
cause, in the former period, a number of 
costly hangings were applied to cover and 
veil various parts of the altar and choir, as 
well as some of the objects used, which were 
calculated to contribute to the solemnity of 
Divine Worship and to a devout frame of 
mind in the congregation; whereas, on the 
contrary, from the beginning of the Renais- 
sance period the many 'oela, with other dec- 
orative fabrics, fell into desuetude, in order 
that the eyes of the faithful might penetrate 
into the innermost sanctuary. Hence also 
the disuse or removal in Southern churches 
of the jube. From this time not only from 
the detached high altars were the hangings 
by degrees laid aside, and which had sep- 
arated the altar from the narrow presbytery, 
but in the last centuries were also discon- 
tinued the hangings of the side altars, which 



405 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

had served to turn aside the wandering 
glances of the congregation assembled about 
the altar in the middle of the church. 

These tetravela, as Anastasius always calls 
them, were fastened under the architrave of 
the flat- roofed ciborium altars; if the ceiling 
were arched (round or pointed), the tetra- 
vela were fastened to iron rings run upon a 
rod fixed between the columns, and so could 
be drawn backwards and forwards at pleas- 
ure. 

Both sides of the altar were draped with 
vela, consisting, as a rule, of large square 
curtains, which were never drawn aside dur- 
ing the celebration of the Eucharist; but the 
hangings at the front and back of the altar, 
as many old pictures represent, were gener- 
ally divided in two, like long window cur- 
tains, and could be folded together below 
and fastened to the columns, in order to af- 
ford a view of the altar-table and the offici- 
ating priest. 

The division of the hangings at the back 
of the ciborium altar was necessary in the 
earlier centuries after the concession of the 
free Christian worship, it having been an 
ancient usage of the Church, which was for 
a long time afterwards maintained, that at 
406 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the celebration of the Holy Mysteries the 
bishop, rising from his cathedra in the apse, 
should approach the back of the altar and 
turn his face to the congregation. The four 
draperies of the ancient ciborium explain 
further that a literal interpretation was to 
be given to the words of the priest's prayer, 
" Introibo ad altare Dei," now pronounced 
on the altar steps, but which prior to the 
tenth century he repeated beyond the bounds 
of the ciborium and its vela; and in like 
manner the oratio veli of the Latins, " Aufer 
a nobis, Domine, iniquitates nostras, ut ad 
Sancta Sanctorum puris mereamur mentibus 
introire," was to be literally understood. 

In the remaining liturgies of the most an- 
cient Churches is often to be found a similar 
so-called oratio veli or velaminis, i. e., a 
prayer which the officiant said after he had 
finished the introductory prayers of the Mass 
on the outer side of the veiled altar, and was 
on the point of quitting the apse to enter the 
Sancta Sanctorum, of which the curtains at 
the front and back were drawn aside by the 
assistants, so that the Most Holy should be 
visible to the congregation.* 

^ Such an oratio veli is to be found, for example, in the Liturgy 
of St. James (printed in Binterim's Katholischen Denkwurdig- 

407 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

During the secret portion of the ceremo- 
nies of the Holy Sacrifice, therefore, from 
the Sanctus to the Communion, the tetravela 
were closed, so that then the priest was en- 
tirely withdrawn from the view of the con- 
gregation. In order, however, to give notice 
how far the ceremonies had proceeded, it 
was the usage of the celebrant, at certain 
leading portions of the Holy Mass, to make 
a signal with a little hand-bell, a custom 
which has survived the disuse of the tetra- 
vela for many centuries until the present time. 

Whenever coronations took place at Milan, 
they were held within the walls of St. Am- 
brose's, as in the first instance that of Otho I 
in 961 ; and either here or at Pavia did nine 
" Kings of the Romans " receive the crown 
at the hands of the Milanese Archbishops. 
This was the corona di ferro, so called from 
the iron circlet set within the golden one, and 
said to be formed from a nail of the Cruci- 
fixion.^ 

keiten, iv, s. 148-212; and the prayer in question on the same 
page, I76ff.), and in the Liturgy of St. Gregory. Also the altar 
prayer, at present in use, commencing Aujer a nobis, etc., is, 
as observed above, to be considered as such an oratio veli 
belonging to the most ancient Latin liturgies. 

* This iron crown is now preserved in the neighbouring 
cathedral of Monza, chiefly remarkable as the possessor of one 

408 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The ancient liturgy for these coronations 
attests in a very striking manner the admix- 
ture of the democratic element in the then 
constitution of Milan. Two bishops, at a 
certain passage in the ceremonial, were to 
ask the people whether they desired such a 
prince and would submit to him as King? 
and if no response were made these prelates 
offered thanks to God for the acceptable 
election, while all present joined in the Kyrie 
eleison. 

It was before that rebuilding ordered by 
Archbishop Anaspertus that his munificent 
predecessor, Angilbertus, bestowed on the 
Basilica of St. Ambrose that splendid shrine 
for the relics of the great Doctor of the 
Western Church which still encases the high 
altar, though no longer visible save on three 
high festivals, or with permission from the 

of those facades in marbles of different shapes and colours, 
more commonly met with in central than Northern Italy. As 
a specimen of complete Gothic I hardly know its equal; the 
trelliswork introduced above and on either side of the great 
rose window, and the tracery of those lighting the compartment 
of the facade on either side of the porch, being in my opinion 
as beautiful as anything at Orvieto or Siena. By those who 
love quiet, Monza will be preferred to Milan, of which it is now 
to all intents and purposes a suburb pleasantly accessible by 
the electric car. 

409 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

authorities on payment of a prescribed fee. 
Formerly, it seems, that this magnificent 
piece of the goldsmiths' art was exposed at 
all times; for we are told that in 1333 a 
Cardinal Legate ordered it to be surrounded 
by a railing for a protection against danger 
of robbery. As it is, the heads of the three 
Magi in the group of the Epiphany are 
wanting. 

At the front of solid gold, at the sides and 
back of silver gilt and adorned with enamels, 
the entire surface profusely studded with 
gems, this exquisite specimen of metallurgy 
is surrounded by reliefs on panels represent- 
ing scenes from Gospel history, figures of 
the Saviour, the Evangelists, archangels, the 
principal saints of Milan, and twelve scenes 
from the life of St. Ambrose, historic and 
legendary. Ughelli gives the estimate of its 
cost at 30,000 gold solidi, or 80,000 sequins; 
and the diploma of Angilbertus for appoint- 
ing the new abbot confides to his custody and 
that of his monastic successors this superb 
altar-tomb, qualified with just complacency 
as the work, " quod inibi noviter mirifice 
hedificari " (j/c). 

As an art production of the ninth century 
it is indeed still more precious than for its 
410 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

intrinsic costliness. In execution the illus- 
trations of the life of St. Ambrose are the 
most admirable, as well as interesting for the 
testimony they bear to ancient ecclesiastical 
usages. We see here the simple altar of the 
early Milanese church, without candles or 
ornaments on its mensa, but only the plain 
cross, a two-handled chalice, round loaves 
cross-marked for consecration, and a scroll 
instead of a volume for either the Liturgy 
or the Gospels; while, as to costume, the 
comparative simplicity of the pontifical at- 
tire in two figures is observable. St. Ambrose 
is receiving a model of this shrine from An- 
gilbertus, who receives in reward a jewelled 
crown (or rather cap) upon his head; and 
both are vested in the alb, chasuble and long 
pallium of Greek fashion, but neither wears 
the mitre. 

In another curious group we see the epis- 
copal donor placing a similar, but less pre- 
cious, ornament on the head of the artist, 
whose name and qualification are inscribed, 
"Wolfinus, magister phaber" {sic)^ appar- 
ently Teutonic, though classed with Italian 
metallurgists by Italian art historians.^ The 

^ Cicognara, Storia delta Scultura. An excellent coloured 
plate of this shrine is given in Ferrano, Monumenti sacri i 

411 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

baptism by immersion, with the use of the 
affusion on the head at the same time, is an- 
other noteworthy detail in the relief, of the 
exceptional administration of that Sacrament 
to Ambrose after the popular act that raised 
him, by unanimous suffrages, to the bishop- 
ric. 

Another curious and interesting item in 
the instrumenta of St. Ambrose's is the pul- 
pit or ambon, a low stone gallery standing on 
columns with three arches in its longest or 
north and south sides, and two on its east and 
west ones. 

The capitals of the shafts are carved in 
eagles, and the spandrel spaces between the 
arcades have pelicans and various animals. 
On the south side of the ambon an ancient 
brass eagle bearing a book desk projects 
from the front, below which is a seated fig- 
ure. The bases of the shafts are early and 
rest on tortoises. Just under the ambon is a 
carved sarcophagus, which has been styled 
the tomb of Stilicho, but this is an antiqua- 
rian whim, there not being the slightest foun- 
dation for the belief. On its back are eleven 
figures seated at a table, said to represent 

projant delV imperiale e reale Basilica dt Sant' Ambroxio in 
Milano (1824). 

412 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

an Agape, or Love Feast; besides which 
there are the monograms XP AXl and tvvo 
birds drinking from a cup. This pulpit is 
said to have been rebuilt in 1201; but most 
of the ornaments are so evidently of the ear- 
liest Lombard period that it can then only- 
have been repaired. 

The mosaic work in the apse is a magnifi- 
cent specimen of Byzantine art, ordered by 
the Abbot Gaudentius, the same nominated 
to office at this monastery by Archbishop 
Angilbertus in 835. The central subject here 
represented on a field of gold is the Saviour 
enthroned, holding a book open at the words, 
" Ego sum lux mundi," a grand and express- 
ive figure, which Venturi is of opinion is in 
the twelfth-century Greek manner when the 
whole work was restored, but still in con- 
formity with early types.^ Above the throne 
we see the floating forms of the archangels 
Michael and Gabriel, with names in Greek; 
beside it are SS. Gervasius and Protasius, 
richly vested, the former crowned; beneath 
appear medallions of SS. Satyrus and Mar- 
cellina (brother and sister to St. Ambrose), 

" The palms have become mere ornaments, and the way in 
which the small scenes invade the field betray the inexperi- 
enced designer. 

413 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and St. Candida. In addition there are 
eighteen seated figures, each with an open 
book, supposed to be the suffragan bishops 
of the province, and two scenes in church 
interiors — St. Ambrose celebrating Mass 
before the people, and the story told by 
Gregory the Great of the soul of St. Ambrose 
attending the obsequies of St. Martin of 
Tours while his body remained asleep in the 
basilica during the Mass. Laterally, on a 
larger scale, is the representation of another 
Mass celebrated by St. Ambrose at a circular 
altar, without ornament save a plain cross 
upon it, and St. Martin chanting the gospel 
at an ambon. These last subjects are in- 
tended to illustrate the legend of the Milan- 
ese prelate being translated in ecstasy, while 
at the rites in his Cathedral, to attend (a 
case of bilocation) that funeral at Tours — 
a legend Baronius shows to be quite unten- 
able. At an angle beneath the principal 
compartment of this mosaic is a curious mon- 
ogram in Gothic letters, which may be read: 
" Angilberto Karoli Ludovico fecit f rater 
Gaudentius." 

In the apse vault of the chapel of St. Sa- 
tyrus, which, like the domes of the Baptis- 
tery and St. Vitalis at Ravenna, is con- 
414 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

structed of pots, are some mosaics of the 
eighth century. 

Excavations made in 1859 disclosed sub- 
structions of a small parallel-triapsidal ba- 
silica, of which this chapel occupied the cen- 
tre. It is believed to have formed part of 
the ancient Basilica Fausta, and dates from 
the fifth century. The cupola and penden- 
tives are encrusted with gold mosaic, upon 
which are placed a central disc with a bust 
of St. Victor (to whom this chapel was orig- 
inally dedicated), and a border at the base 
of the dome. On the walls between the win- 
dows on the two sides are six standing fig- 
ures in groups of three: St. Ambrose with 
SS. Gervasius and Protasius, the three saints 
whose memory has ever been attached to this 
venerable church; and St. Maternus between 
SS. Delicius and Nabor. All are costumed 
as Romans, and are standing on a blue 
ground. On the pendentives are the Evangel- 
istic symbols, and inside the lunettes medal- 
lions of Apostles. The arrangement points 
to the probability that the centre medallion 
was once occupied by a bust of our Lord. 

Although it is desirable that the differ- 
ences between Gothic and classic architecture 
should be understood, it is possible to over- 
415 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

estimate the opposition there may be between 
their principles, and to the disadvantage of 
the art of architecture. Those who devote 
themselves to the elucidation of theory rather 
than practice are apt to dwell too strongly 
upon the opposition without sufficiently bear- 
ing in mind that the one style actually grew 
out of the other, and that the history of ar- 
chitecture, so long as it was a real and living 
art, was one of progress and development. 
The first links in this great chain were as 
valuable as the last, and not one can be dis- 
pensed with. Because the general tendency 
of classic architecture was to breadth and 
horizontality, therefore it is generally thought 
that to be pure all vertical lines must be 
avoided; and, 'Dice versa, it is usually sup- 
posed that, because height and verticality are 
the main principles affected in the Gothic 
style, therefore any approach to horizontal 
lines is to be scrupulously avoided. Follow- 
ing out this view of the matter Professor 
Freeman came to the conclusion that the 
Perpendicular style, as in the English 
Gothic, is the highest and only complete 
style; and that those preceding it were com- 
paratively conditions of transition, unsatis- 
factory in so far that the opposite element 
416 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

to its perpendicularity and continuity of lines 
had not been wholly overcome. 

From this point of view the Gothic of 
Italy might claim pre-eminence over all oth- 
ers. The struggle there between the two 
principles was short, sharp and decisive. 
We see in it the gradual victory of vertical- 
ism over horizontality, till, at last, the latter 
is wholly eliminated, and a reedy weakness 
of effect is the result. Perhaps this is rather 
a strained view of the question, but there are 
few practical architects who will not endorse 
it. 

In the eyes of the best judges the Gothic 
of Italy never rose to the excellence of the 
countries beyond the Alps. Even if the sup- 
posed principles of the style were most thor- 
oughly exhibited in it, yet it always seemed 
to lack something of the true spirit. I have 
dwelt upon some of these failings in earlier 
chapters, particularly in that dealing with 
the vast church of St. Petronio at Bologna, 
a contemporary with the Cathedral of Milan, 
usually considered one of the glories of Ital- 
ian Gothic architecture, in which we are 
struck almost with surprise that such a forest 
of pinnacles can fail to convey the true feel- 
ing of the aspiring Gothic style. 
417 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

In this sumptuous work, constructed in 
white marble with the utmost elaboration, 
the flat pitch of the roofs seems to restrain 
the efforts to carry the eye upward, which 
otherwise their elegant outline would seem 
calculated to do. Though such ornaments, 
in subordination to other upright masses, are 
quite consistent with the Gothic spirit, they 
are felt, in the present instance, to transgress 
this condition. The numerical strength of 
this marble army makes it the governing 
power; the statuary domineers over the ar- 
chitecture, and we collect out of all this host 
of personages and attitudes no definite lines 
and regular forms, such as alone can give 
architectural effect, 
y The general design of the Cathedral at 
Milan belongs to the latter part of the four- 
teenth century, but much doubt exists as to 
the exact date of the commencement of the 
work. It is clear, however, that the capitals 
of the great piers were being prepared in 
1394-5, ^"d that the piers themselves were 
being erected in 1401. The records of the 
wardens of the church are deficient until 
1387, in which year an official paper speaks 
of the building which " Multis retro tem- 
poribus initiata est, et quae nunc fabricatur." 
418 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Chronicles and an inscription concur in fix- 
ing March 15, 1386, as the date of com- 
mencement; but Simone da Orsenigo, prob- 
ably an eyewitness of the facts to which he 
is evidence, states that the work was begun 
May 23, 1386, but was destroyed, and that 
the existing structure was commenced May 
7, 1387. He was employed as one of the 
architects at least as early as December 6 in 
that year, so that the date, 1386-87, usually 
given, is possibly the period of attempts to 
begin the work, and explains the phrase 
" multis temporibus." 

The Duomo of Milan has been much be- 
lauded as a specimen of Northern art modi- 
fying itself to suit the Southern climate 
under the hands of a German, or, at all 
events, of a foreigner rather than of a na- 
tive; but facts seem to destroy this imputed 
credit. 

The official list of the " ingegneri," as the 
chief artists who laboured at the Duomo 
were called, show the earliest employment 
of foreigners in the case of Nicolas Bona- 
venture of Paris, from July 6, 1388, till his 
dismissal, July 31, 1391 ; and the same evi- 
dence seems to divide the merit of the earli- 
est direction of the works between Marco 
419 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and Jacopo, both of Campiona, a village be- 
tween the lakes of Lugano and Como. 

The first name in the records of 1387 is 
that of Marco, supposed to be the Marco da 
Frisona, who was buried July 8, 1390, with 
great honours; Jacopo occurs March 20, 
1388, having apparently been engaged from 
1378 as one of the architects to the Church 
of the Certosa near Pavia; he died 1398. 

The official notes of the disputes that were 
constantly arising between the contempora- 
neous " ingegneri-generali " and their sub- 
ordinates, and the foreign artists, even re- 
cord the fact that the Italian combatants 
disagreed on the great question of propor- 
tioning the building by the foreign system 
of squares, or by the native theory of tri- 
angles. If there be any merit in a work that 
was the offspring of so many minds, much of 
it must be due to the wardens, who seem to 
have ordered the execution of so little that 
was not recommended by the majority of 
their artists, or, in case of an equal division, 
by an umpire of reputation from some other 
city. 

From 1430 the names of Filippo Brunel- 
leschi and six or seven other artists precede 
the notice, 1483, of Johann von Gratz, who 
420 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

appears to have been invited for the purpose 
of constructing the central tiburio or lantern. 
As usual, the foreigner's work was con- 
demned; and on April 13, 1490, Giovanni 
Antonio Omodeo ^ began his long rule over 
the other artists, which lasted until August 
27, 1522, by executing the present work. 

It is needless to give the names of his col- 
leagues and successors until the appointment 
of Carlo Amati, 1806, under whom the com- 
pletion of the works, including the three 
pointed windows of the western facade, was 
resumed, and of his successor, P. Pastagalli, 
1813. 
/ Milan Cathedral is constructed of white 
marble. The plan is that of a Latin cross, 
the transepts projecting to the depth of one 
of their three bays beyond the aisles, of 
which there are two on either side of the 
nave, but one only on either side of the choir 
and transepts. From west to east the length 
of the Duomo is 490 feet, and its extreme 
breadth, i. e., at the transepts, 295 feet. The 
length of the nave is 279 feet, and its width, 
inclusive of the double aisles, is 197 feet. 

^ Hclnrich von Gmunden, employed so early as from Decem- 
ber ir, 1391, to May 31, 1392, was confused with Omodeo 
by M. Millin, whence the repute of Heinrich as " Zamodia." 

421 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

The east end is formed of three sides of a 
nonagon, the choir aisles being continued 
round the apse as a procession path, but 
without any chapels, as in some German ex- 
amples.^ The architecture of the doors and 
windows of the western fagade is in the Re- 
naissance style, and was executed about 1658, 
for the first three bays of the nave were an 
addition in front of the original fagade, and 
were not vaulted until 1651-69. 

About 1790 it was determined to Gothi- 
cize the west front, keeping the doors and 
windows, by Picchini, from designs by Pelli- 
grini, on account of the richness of their 
workmanship. Its apex is 170 feet from the 
pavement. 

The central buttresses are 195 feet high. 
The unsatisfactory central pinnacle, which 
terminates the lantern, was completed shortly 
after the middle of the eighteenth century by 
F. Croce; it rises 400 feet from the floor of 
the church, and features those of the fagade. 
All the turrets, buttresses and pinnacles are 
surmounted with statues, and the roof is en- 



* St. Laurence and St. Sebald, Nuremburg, the Cathedral 
at Munich, the Marien Kirche at Lippstadt, and the Dom 
at Verden. 

422 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tirely covered with blocks of marble, fitted 
together with the greatest exactness. 

The Cathedral of Milan has been wonder- 
fully contrived to bury millions of money in 
ornaments which are never to be seen. Whole 
quarries of marble have been manufactured 
here into statues, rilievos, niches and notches, 
and high sculpture has been expended on 
objects which vanish individually in the 
mass. 

Were two or three hundred of those statues 
removed, the rest would regain their due 
importance, and the fabric itself become 
more intelligible. These figures stand in 
rows, which cross and confound the vertical 
direction of the architecture; for here the 
eye naturally runs up the channelled but- 
tresses, the lofty windows with their long 
muUions and flamboyant tracery, and the 
lateral spires, and can never keep in the hori- 
zontal line of the Greek entablature. This 
rage for sculpture has encircled the very 
tops of the great internal piers with statues, 
which tend to conceal the groinings, just 
where they spring so finely into the vault, 
interrupting the immeasurable plumb-line 
and lessening the apparent height and exil- 
ity admired in a Gothic pillar. 
423 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

From its size, and the sumptuousness of 
its materials and adornment, the exterior of 
the Duomo at Milan will always appeal to 
the masses, while to the true artist with the 
beautiful proportions and studied simplicity 
of Amiens, Bourges, Chartres and Rheims 
fresh in his mind, it must appear vulgar and 
unsatisfactory. How this is accounted for I 
need not here recapitulate, having already 
dwelt upon the reason of the unsatisfactory 
nature of complete Italian Pointed in the 
introductory chapter. It is worthy of remark 
that, notwithstanding the changes to which 
I have alluded in the history of its erection, 
Milan Cathedral has a marvellously homo- 
geneous character, and to those unversed in 
its chronology it would appear to be a Flow- 
ing Decorated work, the offspring of one 
mind.^ 



* The exterior of Milan Cathedral wears its most impressive 
aspect by moonh'ght. It was during a solitary midnight walk 
through the city that Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley came suddenly 
upon the huge marble Cathedral under this condition. The 
sight made a profound impression upon the distinguished 
English church composer, and the words, " How goodly are 
thy tents," instantly occurred to him. There and then he con- 
ceived the idea of setting them to music, and it is to this circum- 
stance that we owe one of the most expressive and beautiful 
of Ouseley's anthems. 

424 



MILAN 
West Front of the Cathedral 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Within, there resides a solemnity which, 
in spite of certain defects, collects the soul 
and inspires devotion; indeed, I may go so 
far as to say that no work of men's hands 
so fills and elevates the mind with infinite 
awe, and, if I may so express it, sublime 
humility, as the interior of Milan Cathedral, 
with its calm holy twilight, which veils its 
lofty vaultings and dims its distant vistas. 

A rich tone is diffused over the interior 
of the Duomo at Milan by its being entirely 
composed of a particular description of mar- 
ble brought from above the Lago Maggiore, 
to which time gives a fine yellow tint; and 
the pavement being laid in a mosaic pattern 
of red, white and blue marble, an ensemble 
of rich yet subdued colour is produced. 

The great feature of the interior is its 
quadruple row of gigantic clustered pillars 
with their nine intercolumnations. 

Fifty-two pillars support the vaultings of 
the roof, which, springing directly from 
them, gives an appearance of even greater 
loftiness than they would otherwise convey, 
although each pillar measures, capital and 
base included, no less than eighty feet. The 
capitals, designed by Filippino of Modena, 
are beautiful in themselves, but they are only 
425 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

a compromise between a form occurring in 
Germany, as, for instance, in the Church of 
Our Lady at Nuremburg, and the great, 
deep capitals with their three rows of leaf- 
age in the Cathedrals of Florence and Ve- 
rona, and in St. Petronio at Bologna. Had 
the ornamentation of the capitals been ex- 
tended to the spring of the vault, they would 
have been unexceptionable; as it is, with all 
their richness, their effect is somewhat un- 
meaning. Taken by themselves, these cap- 
itals at Milan, to say nothing of their unique 
character, are unparalleled in their work- 
manship and in the manner in which it is 
introduced. 

The lowest part of the capitals is formed 
by a wreath of foliage, mixed with figures 
of children and animals; above is a circle 
of eight inches corresponding to the inter- 
vals between the eight shafts of the clustered 
pillar, each equipped with a canopied statue. 
The bases and plans of the pillars are equally 
anomalous. The diameter of the four enor- 
mous pillars which support the lantern is 
one-fifth greater than that of the others. 
Two of these colossal supports are encircled 
by pulpits of bronze and silver, begun by 
the directions of the exemplary St. Carlo^ 
426 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and completed by his nephew, Cardinal 
Federigo Borromeo.^ These are covered by 
\. basso-rilievos by Andrea Pellizone, and rest 
on colossal caryatid figures of the four Evan- 
gelists and the four Latin doctors — Greg- 
ory, Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine, mod- 
elled by Brambilla and cast by Busca. In 
the first bay on either side of the choir is an 
organ case commensurate in size with its 
colossal surroundings, and of that rich Re- 
naissance type so common throughout Italy. 
The general effect of the choir, with its pend- 
ent lamps, the great rood placed upon a 
beam extending across the eastern arch of the 
lantern, and the richly carved stalls repre- 
senting scenes from the history of St. Augus- 
tine and St. Ambrose, is solemn and grand, 
and in every way calculated to set off the 
impressive ritual observed here. 

The floor of Milan Cathedral was of a 
uniform level till the time of St. Carlo Bor- 
romeo, who by the aid of the architect Pelle- 
grini raised the choir considerably, and con- 
structed an undercroft or winter choir of 
Renaissance style. From it the chapel con- 
taining the remains of St. Charles is entered. 

* From the northern of these pulpits the Epistle and Gospel 
are sung, agreeably to the Ambrosian ritual at High Mass. 

427 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Bishop of Milan from 1560 to 1584, Carlo 
Borromeo is a saint whom the most bigoted 
Protestant must reverence, for his life was 
made up of the noblest Christian virtues: 
benevolence, humility, self-sacrifice, courage 
and disinterestedness. Unostentatious as he 
was benevolent, such an exhibition as is pre- 
sented by the disposition of his remains amid 
silver, gems and crystal, would be most dis- 
tasteful to one whose motto was Humilitas, 
and who, could he reappear on earth, would 
order his bones to be buried and the jewels 
to be sold and given to the poor. 

If in this Duomo at Milan we do not feel 
the poetry of architecture to its full extent, 
we can understand the wondrous effects pro- 
duced by the arrangement of light and 
shadow to perfection, which, during the 
daily course of the sun, is seen here in the 
most enchanting manner, every moment pro- 
ducing a fresh effect. First, there is the 
burst of light at the eastern end, when the 
whole choir and apse are illuminated from 
the rising sun; then the southern transept 
and aisles receive the reflection of noonday; 
the light gradually passing round, till the 
classical western windows with their not very 
felicitous stained glass are lighted up with 
428 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

the glowing tints of sunset, every capital with 
its coronal of niched figures catching the 
warm light which penetrates up to the choir, 
now wrapt in sombre shade; till, impercep- 
tibly fading as twilight comes stealing on, 
each detail becoming less and less distinct, 
the whole perspective is lost in general ob- 
scurity relieved only by the six great candles 
on the high altar,* the pair of seven lamps 
pendent at the entrance to the choir, the 
lamp high up on the rood-beam marking the 
presence of the Nail of the Crucifixion, and 
by the four burning at the sepulchre of St. 
Carlo Borromeo beneath the great dome. 

Then the five vast aisles of this stupendous 
fabric produce such a wonderful variety of 
outline and perspective that they assume a 
new aspect at every step; indeed the same 
structure, seen from different situations, ap- 
pears like a totally different edifice. 

O Milan, O the chanting quires; 
' The giant windows' blazon'd fires; 

The height, the space, the gloom, the glory! 
A mount of marble, a hundred spires. 

Tennyson. 

While awaiting the commencement of the 

* There being an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament on the 
occasion of my visit, these were kept burning all day. 

429 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Divine Offices within the dusky choir of the 
Duomo on this beautiful June morning, the 
angels of architecture had many lovely and 
curious things to tell, and unfolded the inner 
meanings of pillars and arches, roof and 
windows, lights and shadows. 

And, as I listened, every now and then it 
seemed as if they were telling things that I 
had always known before, and I saw that the 
whole building was, as it were, a Sacrament, 
and that every outward and visible form had 
an inward and spiritual meaning which gave 
new dignity and power. And when a sol- 
emn introductory piece was played upon the 
organ, I felt that the angels of music too 
were there as witnesses to the consecration of 
the beauty of melody and harmony to the 
service of the temple, and by their presence 
adding a solemnity and pathos which would 
not be found in such a degree without them. 

It is impossible to leave the study of Chris- 
tian antiquities at Milan without considering 
what may be styled a monument, and that 
among the most venerable in character and 
claim : that Ambrosian liturgy, now confined 
to this sole archdiocese, but once, as Duran- 
dus reports, in use, whose extensiveness sur- 
passed even that of the Roman, and till so 
430 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

late as the sixteenth century retained at the 
altars of Bologna and Capua. Nor is it one 
of the least benefits secured to this illustrious 
Church by the great and good St. Carlo Bor- 
romeo, to have maintained, as he did, the 
place and practice of this primitive ritual 
against the aggressive attempt of the Papacy, 
which in his day aimed at its suppression. 
Both St. Carlo and his nephew, the Cardinal 
Federigo Borromeo, published the Milanese 
Missal, with declaration of their resolve to 
preserve the Ambrosian rite incorrupt. Re- 
ferred by some writers to St. Barnabas and 
to the Bishop St. Mirocletus, — to St. Am- 
brose himself only in respect to the numerous 
additions of antiphons, hymns and arrange- 
ments of psalms for chanting, due to him, as 
well as the system of vocal music he intro- 
duced, from Oriental example, — it is gener- 
ally acknowledged to be, in its main compo- 
sition, of higher antiquity than the great 
saint whose name it bears; perhaps to a con- 
siderable extent modified and reordered after 
the See of Milan had been restored from the 
suppression it underwent at the hands of the 
Longobards. 

At the Solemn High Mass which I at- 
tended on the morning of Friday, June 22, 
431 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

I had opportunities for noticing the several 
peculiarities in the Ambrosian ritual, placed 
as I was in the benches arranged chorus-wise 
just within the low screen which separates 
the choir from the crossing. 

Among them were the Confractorium, an 
anthem sung whilst the celebrant breaks the 
consecrated species; the covering of the 
head, evidently of Oriental origin, in mark 
of reverence, the mitre being worn by the 
priest, deacon, subdeacon and ceremoniarius; 
the chanting of the Epistle and Gospel in 
peculiar tones from the northern ambon, and 
the kneeling of the deacon and subdeacon 
at the north and south ends of the altar dur- 
ing the prayers, their hands being folded on 
the mensa. 

I also observed that peculiar Ambrosian 
use for censing the altar, the deacon going 
all round it for this purpose attended by the 
subordinates. At the Lavabo the deacon 
stood at the priest's right hand with the 
towel, the subdeacon at his left hand with the 
ewer, and the acolyte between them with the 
bason. At the consecration they all knelt in 
a row behind the celebrant in this order, 
counting from the north: subdeacon, thuri- 



432 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

fers, acolyte, deacon; while behind them 
knelt four taper-bearers. Immediately after 
the Communion the subdeacon veiled and 
carried out the chalice. 

The censers used at Milan are open and 
shallow; consequently they cannot be swung 
high like the common covered ones. 

But the most interesting usage that obtains 
in Milan Cathedral is the offering of the 
sacramental elements by some members of 
a confraternity known as the Scuola di St. 
Ambrogio. 
">- It consists of ten aged people of both sexes, 
certain of whom appear at every High Mass 
in grave costume of monastic fashion, bear- 
ing, in silver and glass vessels, the bread and 
wine for sacred use. This well-known prim- 
itive and once medieval observance takes 
place at the Offertorium, the males slowly 
passing up to the altar and the females halt- 
ing just without the rails to the choir. 

These Vecchioni, as they are styled, are 
maintained from the revenues of the Cathe- 
dral for the purpose of making the offertory 
directly after the Oratio super Stndonem, 
which answers to the prayer of the Greek 
Church, fi€Ta TO dirXooOrjvai to elXijTov'^ and Milan 



433 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Cathedral is the only church in Europe 
where the old oblation alluded to so innu- 
merable times by the Fathers is retained.^ 

When I witnessed this ceremonial — ac- 
companied by music commensurate in gran- 
deur and solemnity — in the glorious cathe- 
dral, it impressed me as a touching and 
deeply significant accessory to dignified wor- 
ship, forming a link that unites the ancient 
with the modern Church, not well laid aside 
by the more extended practice of our time, 
and also of avail to neutralize that character 
of ritual exclusiveness often objected to in 
the Latin Catholic celebrations as the cause 
of absolute severance between the officiating 
clergy and the people. 

There was an immense concourse of per- 
sons present, but there was no impression of 
a crowd. The church was not thronged, not 
even full; there still seemed room for a na- 
tion to come in. In ordinary buildings, 
when they are filled to their utmost capacity, 
the architecture disappears and the mind and 
eye are occupied only with the men and 
women. But the Duomo at Milan can never 
be thus put down. Fill it full of human life, 
it would still be something greater than them 

* Vide Muratori, Anti(i. Ital. iv, 854. 

434 






The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

all. Men, however numerous they might be, 
would be but appendages to its mountainous 
bulk. As the sky is more than the stars, and 
the wooded valley more than the trees, so is 
Milan Cathedral more than any amount of 
humanity that can be gathered within its 
arms. 



435 



A LIST OF SOME OF THE MOST 
REMARKABLE PICTURES AND 
WALL-PAINTINGS IN THE 
CHURCHES DESCRIBED OR AL-^ 
LUDED TO IN THIS WORK 

Next to their architecture the most inter-j 
esting feature of the Italian Cathedrals andj 
Churches is their adornment with paintings, 
either in the form of frescoes covering vast 
spaces of wall and roof, or of pictures on 
wood and canvas fixed into altarpieces or 
suspended against the walls. Indeed one 
may say that, in not a few instances, where 
a fine Lombardo-Romanesque or Pointed 
Gothic church has had its interior tampered 
with during the era of classicism, the work 
of the architect will be regarded by most 
people with but languid interest beside that 
of the artist. 

In the foregoing chapters I have abstained 
almost entirely from mentioning the pictures 
and wall-paintings with which the greater 
436 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

number of the churches described are so 
richly endowed, for the reason that such con- 
stant reference would become wearisome upon 
repetition. It has, therefore, been deemed 
expedient to present the most interesting and 
important of these works of art in catalogue 
form, a few notes — brief ones only, from 
exigencies of space — being here and there 
given. 

The recurrence of one or more painters' 
names in the churches of some particular 
city is accounted for by the fact that these 
persons were natives of the surrounding dis- 
trict, or that they formed a school of paint- 
ing which flourished in that particular city. 

Thus at Verona we have Giolfino, Domen- 
ico and Francesco Morone, Girolamo dai 
Libri, Felice Brusasorzi and Caroto; at 
Padua, Andrea Mantegna and Giotto; at 
Venice, Cima da Conegliano, Tintoretto and 
Titian, Paolo Veronese, Vivarini and the 
Bellini; at Ferrara, Dosso Dossi, Garofalo, 
Cosima Tura, Bastianino, Carlo Bonone and 
Niccolo Rosselli; at Bologna, Annibale and 
Lodovico Caracci, Franceschini, Guido Reni, 
Tiarini, the Francias, Guercino and Inno- 
cenza da Imola; at Parma, Correggio and 
Parmegianino ; at Brescia, Pietro Rosa, Ber- 
437 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

nardino Gandini, Moretto, Romanino and 
Foppa the younger; and at Novara, Vercelli 
and Milan, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Lanini, Bor- 
gognone and the Luini. 

The sacred painting of Italy is so full of 
the traces of legendary literature, that unless 
we travel with such fascinating companions 
as Cicognara, Kiigler, Crowe and Cavalca- 
selle, and Mrs. Jameson, it is vain to think 
of fully entering into its spirit, or even of 
merely comprehending its literal meaning 
without having some knowledge of that vast 
storehouse of romantic fiction which the 
Church accumulated around its ancient he- 
roes. Much of it is absurd, not a little pro- 
fane, irreligious and even repellent; but a 
great deal is beautiful, pathetic, practical 
and touching in the highest degree. 



VERONA 

The Cathedral 

Liberale, The Adoration of the Three 
Kings. Giolfino, SS. Roch, Anthony the 
Hermit, Bartholomew and Sebastian (second 
altar on right). Morone, SS. James and 
John, with head of the painter below. Giol- 
438 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

fino, The Last Supper (fourth altar on 
right). Titian, The Assumption (first altar 
on left). In the sacristy: Morone, SS. Peter 
and Paul. In semi-dome of apse: Giulio 
Romano, The Assumption. 

Sta. Anastasia 

Girolamo dai Libri, The Blessed Virgin 
with SS. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, a 
Kneeling Friar and Two Donors (in the 
south transept). Giolfino, The Pentecost. 
Michele da Verona, the same subject (fourth 
chapel on left). Giolfino, SS. George and 
Erasmus (second chapel on left). High 
altar: Torelli, The Death of St. Peter Mar- 
tyr, imitated from Titian. 

Cappella Pellegrini 

(One of Sanmichele's most successful pro- 
ductions.) Left-hand side of choir: Bena- 
glio. The Blessed Virgin Mary and Child 
with Saints. On shutters of the organ: Mo- 
rone, SS. Francesco and Bernardino. 

Sta. Elena 

,> (Adjoining the Baptistery of the Cathe- 
dral) Felice Brusasorzi, St. Helen and other 
Saints. 

439 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Fermo Maggiore 

Caroto, Madonna with Infant and St. 
Anne and other Saints. Domenico Morone, 
SS. Anthony of Padua, Biagio and Nicholas 
(left of choir) . Orbetto, The Nativity (third 
chapel left). Giov. Bait, del Moro, SS. 
Nicholas, Augustine, Anthony the Hermit 
(first chapel on left). Torbido, Virgin and 
Child with Archangel Raphael, Tobias, and 
St. Catherine (third chapel on right). 

St. Giorgio in Braida 

Paolo Veronese, The Martyrdom of St. 
George, a large and vigorous picture in 
which the painter has represented himself 
on horseback, to the right, forms the high- 
altar-piece. Farinati, Miracle of the Loaves 
and Fishes (1603). Felice Brusasorzi, The 
Fall of the Manna (completed by his pupils, 
Ottici and Orbetto). 

Sta. Maria in Organo 

Cavazzolo and Brusasorzi, Small Land- 
scapes in Panels of Stalls. Guercino, Sta. 
Francesca Romana (in south transept). 
Girolamo dai Libri, Blessed Virgin Mary 
440 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and Child with SS. Catherine and Stephen 
(in sacristy). 

SS. Nazario e Celso 

Brusasorztj Choir of Angels on shutters of 
organ. Bonsignori, SS. Biagio and Sebas- 
tian, with (above) the Blessed Virgin Mary 
and Child. Girolamo dai Libri, Martyrdom 
of several Saints (forming the high-altar- 
piece with its predella). 

St. Paolo 

Girolamo dai Libri, Holy Family and St. 
Paul and Two Donors (third altar on right). 
Caroto, Blessed Mary and Child with SS. 
Peter and Paul (at high altar). II Moretto, 
Blessed Virgin Mary and Child and four 
female Saints (fifth altar, left). Girolamo 
dai Libri, Blessed Virgin Mary with SS. 
Zeno, Lorenzo and Giustiniani, a master- 
piece in delicacy of work and beauty of de- 
sign (fourth altar on left). Caroto, SS. Se- 
bastian and Rosco (third altar on left). Ca- 
roto, St. Ursula and Virgins. Brusasorzi, 
Blessed Virgin Mary and Archangels (first 
altar on left). Jacopo Tintoretto, The Bap- 
tism of our Lord (over west door). 
441 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Lorenzo 

Brusasorzi, B. V. M. and Child with St. 
John Baptist and a Bishop. 

St, Tomasso Cantuariense 

Brusasorzi, B. V. M. and Child with SS. 
Catherine, Thomas a Becket, Francis, Cyril, 
Bernard and John Baptist. 

St. Stefano 

Caroto, B. V. M. between SS. Andrew and 
Peter (in south transept). 

Giolfino, B. V. M. with SS. Placida, Maur 
and Simplicio. Brusasorzi, The Epiphany 
(to right and left of high altar). 

Brusasorzi, St. Stephen preceded by the 
Holy Innocents. 

6"/. Zeno 

Andrea Mantegna, The Madonna en- 
throned with eight Angels, and SS. Peter, 
Paul, John Evan., Augustine, Benedict, Law- 
rence, Gregory and John Bapt. (over high 
altar). The painting in the predella is a 
copy of the original. 

442 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

VICENZA 

The Cathedral 

Montagna, B. V. M. and Child with SS. 
Mary Magdalene and Lucia (in fourth 
chapel left). Our Lord with SS. Sebastian 
and John Baptist (in same chapel). 

Lorenzo, B. V. M. and Child with Saints 
in thirty-one compartments on gold ground 
(1366) (in chapel five, right). The frescoes 
in this chapel are attributed to Mantegna. 

St. Lorenzo 

Mantegna, fresco of martyrdom of St 
Paul (in chapel left of choir). 

Montagna, 3. Pieta, between SS. Francis 
and Bernardino (above altar in south tran- 
sept). SS. Lorenzo and Vincenzo, with 
view of a church in background (over altar 
in third chapel right). 

La Santa Corona 

Bart. Montagna, The Magdalene en- 
throned with saints (in second chapel left). 

Bassano, St. Anthony giving alms (third 
chapel left). 

443 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Verda, a fourteenth-century Madonna 
crowned (in fourth chapel left). 

Giovanni Bellini, The Baptism (fifth 
chapel left). 

Speranza, a fresco of B. V. M. and Donors 
(to left of entrance). 

St. Rocco 

Buonconsiglio, B. V. M. and Child with 
SS. Peter and Paul, Vincent Ferrer, and Se- 
bastian (high-altar-piece). 

St. Stefano 

Palma Vecchio, B. V. M. and Child with 
SS. George and Lucian (in north transept) 
highly extolled by Cicognara. 

Tintoretto, St. Paul; restored from "ab- 
ject squalor" by the Parish Priest in 1804 
(first chapel, left). 



PADUA 

The frescoes and paintings in the Baptis- 
tery of the Cathedral, in the Arena Chapel 
and the Church of the Eremitani are de- 
scribed on pp. 122 et seq. 
444 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Cathedral 

Francesco Bassano, The Flight into Egypt 
and the Epiphany (in sacristy). Sassof er- 
rata, Head of the Madonna. Padovanino, 
B. V. M. and Child (copied from Titian). 

St. Antonio 

Jacopo Avanzi and Altichieri da Zevo, 
series of frescoes in Chapel of St. Felix 
(1376). /. Montagnano, The Crucifixion, 
with SS. Sebastian, Gregory, Ursula, Bona- 
ventura and twelve heads of Prophets (on 
fifth pier, south). By an unknown Artist, 
B.V. M. and Child, with SS. Joseph and 
Chiara and a Franciscan Donor (on second 
pier, north). 

Chapel of St. Giorgio 

Altichieri and Jacopo dei Avanzi, fres- 
coes. 

St. Francesco 

Girolamo da Santa Croce (1530), frescoes 
in second chapel on south. 

St. Gaetano 

Titian, a small half-figure of the B. V. M. 
(in chapel of Holy Sepulchre). 
445 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 



Sta. Giustina 

Paolo Veronese, Martyrdom of the Patron 
(high-altar-piece). Luca Giordano, Death 
of St. Scolastica (chapel four, south). Palma 
Giovane, St. Benedict with SS. Placidus and 
Maurus (chapel five, south). Parodi, Dead 
Christ with B. V. M. (south) and St. John 
(chapel south of choir). 

Sta. Maria in Vanzo 

Bartolommeo Montagna, B. V. M. and 
Child, with SS. Peter, John Baptist, Cath- 
erine and Paul (high altar). Jacopo Bas- 
sano, The Entombment (chapel to south of 
choir). Maganza, The Madonna, with the 
Virgin Martyrs, Barbara, Agnes, Giustina, 
Catherine, Lucia, Apollonia and Cecilia 
(fourth chapel, south). 

St. Mich el e 

Jacopo da Verona, The Adoration of the 
Magi (1397). 

VENICE 

After the churches of SS. Giovanni e 
Paolo and Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 
446 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

both described on page 30, the finest Pointed 
church in Venice is that of St. Stefano. As 
in the two churches above-named, the influ- 
ence of the chief Order of Friars in the style 
of ecclesiastical architecture is strongly- 
shown, not only in St. Stefano, but in many 
others, especially in the frequent use of the 
apse as a termination for both choir and side 
chapels. St. Stefano, built about 1360 by a 
monastery of Augustin Friars, has a rich west 
front decorated with very delicate ornaments 
in terra-cotta. The eastern apse extends over 
a small canal, and is supported on a wide 
bridge-like arch. Of the same type are St. 
Gregorio and Sta. Maria della Carita, both 
now desecrated. St. Gregorio has a very 
beautiful cloister of mid-fourteenth-century 
date, the columns of which support, not a 
series of arches, but flat wooden lintels. On 
the capital of each column rests a moulded 
wooden corbel to diminish the bearing of the 
lintel — a very characteristic Venetian mode 
of construction, used, not only for cloisters, 
but also for ground floors of houses, upper 
loggias and other places, especially during 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 

One of the most interesting early churches 
is that of St. Giacomo dall' Orio, built early 
447 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

in the thirteenth century with a complicated 
many-columned plan, the aisles being carried 
along the transepts as well as the nave. The 
roof is a very good example of the wooden 
coved type, of which the finest are at St. 
Zeno and St. Fermo at Verona, and SS. 
Philip and James at Padua. One of the 
columns in the south transept is a monolith 
of the precious Verde-antico, of marvellous 
size and beauty, probably brought from some 
Byzantine church. 

Of the Early Renaissance, Venice exhibits 
some beautiful examples in the western fa- 
cade of St. Zaccaria, and the little church 
of Sta. Maria dei Miracoli. 

In the sixteenth century, and even later, 
some very noble churches of the Later Re- 
naissance were built in Venice by Jacopo 
Sansovino, Andrea Palladio and their school. 
One of Sansovino's best churches — that of 
St. Geminiano — was destroyed at the begin- 
ning of the last century in order to complete 
the west side of the Piazza San Marco. The 
large church of St. Giorgio Maggiore, on 
an island opposite the Ducal Palace, was 
built by Palladio, and may be taken as a 
fair example of the faults and merits of his 
style. This church, and that of Sta. Maria 
448 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

della Salute, magnificently situated on a tri- 
angular piece of ground at the junction of 
the Canal Grande with the Canal della Giu- 
decca, are, perhaps, the most familiar to us, 
from their appearance in the general views 
of Venice. The Salute church was built by 
Baldassare Longhena, in 1632, as a thank- 
offering of the Venetian senate for the cessa- 
tion of the great plague in 1630. Though 
dull and heavy in detail, it has a well-de- 
signed dome, and the ensemble of the build- 
ing is pleasing from its skilful arrange- 
ment. 

Of the other churches built in Venice be- 
tween the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, 
the following are the most remarkable: St. 
Francesco della Vigna, begun in 1554 by 
Sansovino, and completed by Palladio; St. 
Giorgio de' Greci (the church of the Greek 
rite in Venice), by Sansovino; St. Giovanni 
Crisostomo, by TuUio Lombardo (1489); 
The Madonna dei Miracoli, a fusion of the 
Byzantine and Italian styles, by Pietro Lom- 
bardo (1480-89); St. Pietro di Castello, by 
Smeraldi and Grapiglia (1594-1621); II 
Redentore, considered one of Palladio's fi- 
nest efforts (begun 1577) ; St. Salvatore, by 
TuUio Lombardo and Sansovino (c. 1534) ; 
449 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

and St. Sebastiano, by F. Castiglione, of 
Cremona (1506). 

Most of the seventeenth- and eighteenth- 
century churches in Venice are in the worst 
possible taste, extravagantly pretentious in 
style, and become very tiresome upon repe- 
tition. 

A large number of the Venetian churches 
still possess campanili of great beauty, and 
ranging from the eleventh to the sixteenth 
centuries. Of these the fourteenth century 
ones attached to St. Giacomo di Rialto, and 
Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari may be sin- 
gled out for special admiration. 

Almost every church in Venice contains 
one or more specimens of the work of some 
great artist, those mentioned in the annexed 
list being the most worthy of attention: 

Sta. Maria del Carmine 

Cima da Conegliano, The Nativity (at 
second altar, right). Tintoretto, The Pres- 
entation in the Temple (at last altar, right). 
Lor. Lotto, St. Nicholas (at second altar, 
left). 

St. Cassiano 

Tintoretto, The Crucifixion, Descent into 
Hades and Resurrection (in apse). Palma 
450 



« 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Vecchio, St. John Baptist and four Saints 
(at first altar, right). 

Sta, Caterina 

Paolo Veronese, The Marriage of St. Cath- 
erine, St. Francesco della Vigna. Paolo 
Veronese, The Resurrection (in fourth 
chapel, right). Giovanni Bellini, The B. 
V. M. and Child, with four Saints and a 
Worshipper, said to be the painter's portrait 
(altar-piece of the Cappella Santa). 

Jac. del Fiore, altarpiece in sacristy. 

Sta. Maria Assunta dei Gesuiti 

Titian, The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence 
(in first chapel, left) ; The Assumption (in 
north transept). Tintoretto, The Circum- 
cision (in sacristy). 

St. Giacomo di Rialto 

Titian, The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence 
(in first chapel, left). Tintoretto, The As- 
sumption (in second chapel, on left). Mar- 
riage of the Virgin and Annunciation, in first 
chapel on right. 

SS. Giovanni e Paolo 

Carpaccio or Giovanni Bellini, The B. V. 
M. and Saints (above first altar, to right). 
451 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Fivarini, St. Augustine, seated (north tran- 
sept). Rocco Marconi, Christ between SS. 
Peter and Andrew (to right of entrance). 
Lorenzo Lotto, St. Antonio, Abp. of Flor- 
ence, distributing alms (to left of entrance). 
Paolo Veronese, Adoration of the Shepherds 
(second chapel, left of altar). Carpaccio, 
restored by Girolamo da Udine, The Coro- 
nation of the Virgin, with many figures (first 
chapel on left). 

St. Giobbe 

Gentile Bellini, The Doge, Crist. Moro. 

Giovanni Bellini, B. V. M. with SS. John 
Baptist and Catherine. 

Fivarini, The Annunciation (all in the 
sacristy). 

St. Giorgio Maggiore 

Bassano, The Nativity (first altar, right). 

Tintoretto, The martyrdom of Saints; the I 
Virgin crowned (at third and fourth altars) ; 
the Falling of the Manna, and the Last Sup- 
per (in central chapel). 

St. Giovanni in Bragola 

Fivarini, SS. Martin, Jerome and Andrew. 
Paris Bordone, The Last Supper. Cima da 
452 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Conegliano, SS. Helena and Constantina (in 
the sacristy) ; the Baptism of our Lord (high 
altar) . 

St. Giovanni Crisostomo 

Giov. Bellini, St. Jerome and two Saints 
(first altar, right). Seb. del Piombo, St. 
John Chrysostom and other Saints (high 
altar) . 

Sta. Maria dei Frari 

Salviati, Presentation in the Temple with 
SS. Paul, Helen, Bernardino, Augustine, 
Mark and two others. Vivarini, B. V. M. 
and Child with SS. Andrew, Nicholas, Paul 
and Peter (1482). Giovanni Bellini, B. V. 
M. and Child with SS. Ambrose, Augustine, 
James and Benedict (1488) (over altar in sac- 
risty). Salviati, The Assumption (over high 
altar). Bernardino Licinio, B. V. M. and 
Child and saints (over altar of chapel left 
of high altar). Vivarini, SS. Mark, John 
Baptist, Jerome, Augustine and Matthew 
(1474), (altarpiece on west wall of north 
transept) . Titian, The Pala dei Pesari. The 
Virgin, seated on an elevated situation within 
noble architecture, holding the Divine In- 
fant, who is regarding St. Francis; below 
are St. Peter with a book, and St. George, 
453 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

bearing a standard on which is displayed the 
Pesaro arms, with those of the Pope Alex- 
ander VI. The Donatorio, a bishop, and 
five other members of the Pesaro family are 
introduced. 

The collection of tombs in this church, of 
all dates from the thirteenth century down- 
wards, is perhaps unrivalled in Europe. 

La Madonna dell' Orto 

Tintoretto, The Last Judgement; The I 
Worshipping of the Golden Calf; The Mar- 
tyrdom of St. Agnes. Cima da Conegliano, 
St. John Baptist and other saints. Vandyke, 
The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. 

Sta. Maria della Misericordia 

Cima da Conegliano, Tobias and the An- 
gel. 

St. Louis of Toulouse 

Tintoretto, The Epiphany. Palma Gio- 
vane. The Raising of Lazarus. 

Sta. Maria Formosa 

Palma il Vecchio, St. Barbara and other 
Saints (first altar, right). 
454 



\ 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 



Sta. Maria delta Salute 

Luca Giordano, The Purification, As- 
sumption and Nativity of the B. V. M. (in 
three first chapels, right) . Titian, The eight 
smaller compartments on vault of choir; the 
evangelists and doctors. II Padovino, The 
Madonna della Salute. Tintoretto, The Mar- 
riage at Cana. Palma Giovane, Samson and 
Jonas (all in sacristy). 

St. Pantaleone 

Paolo Veronese, St. Pantaleone holding a 
Child (in second chapel, right). G. and A. 
da Murano, The Coronation of the Virgin 
(chapel, left of high altar). 

// Redentore 

F. Bassano, The Nativity (first altar, 
right). Tintoretto, The Flagellation (third 
altar, right); The Ascension (first on left). 
Giov. Bellini, B. V. M. and Child with two 
Angels; The Madonna between SS. John 
Evan, and Catherine; The Madonna be- 
tween SS. Jerome and Francis. 

St. Salvatore 

Titian, The Annunciation (at high altar). 

455 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Giov. Bellini, The Supper at Emmaus (in 
chapel, left of high altar). 

St. Sebastiano 

Paolo Veronese, The roof of this church 
is almost covered with his paintings, of 
which the principal subjects are taken from 
the Book of Esther. This church is the 
burial-place of the painter (d. May 14, 
1588). The paintings in the Cappella Mag- 
giore are entirely the work of Veronese; also j 
those on the shutters of the organ. 

St. Zaccaria 

Giovanni Bellini, The Virgin and Child, 
with four Saints (second altar, left) ; The 
Circumcision (in the choir). Tintoretto, 
Birth of John the Baptist (third altar, left). 

Jacopo Bellini, Frescoes on semi-dome of 
apse (third altar, left). 

FERRARA 

The Cathedral 

Garofalo, B. V. M. & Child & two female 
saints (third chapel, right). Cosimo Tura, 
Martyrdoms of Saints (fourth chapel, right). 
456 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Bastianino, The Last Judgement (in semi- 
dome of apse). Cosimo Tura, The Annun- 
ciation (chapel to right of choir). Francia, 
Coronation of B. V. M. with ten Saints and 
an Innocent (sixth chapel, to left). Garo- 
falo, Madonna with SS. Paul, Giustina, 
Catherine and another. 

St. Benedetto 

Dosso Dossi, A Crucifixion. Scarsellino, 
Martyrdom of St. Catherine; Assumption; 
Luca Longhi, The Circumcision. 

St. Cristoforo 

Niccolo Rosselli, The Mysteries, in twelve 
chapels. 

St. Paolo 

Scarsellino, The Descent of the Holy 
Ghost. Bastianino, The Resurrection. 



BOLOGNA 
The Cathedral 

Fiorini and Aretusi, Christ's Charge to St. 
Peter (in vault of apse). Lodovico Caracci, 
The Annunciation (on arch above high al- 
457 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tar) . Donato Creti, B. V. M. with Infant 
Saviour in clouds surrounded by Angels, 
with St. Ignatius before her (in Chapel of 
the Sacrament). Ercole Grazini, The Bap- 
tism of our Lord (in Baptistery). 

St. Bartolommeo di Porta 

Lod. Caracci, St. Carlo Borromeo (sec- 
ond chapel, right). Albanis, The Annunci- 
ation "del beir Angelo" (in fourth chapel, 
right) ; by the same. The Nativity; Dream 
of St. Joseph. Franc eschini, The Martyr- 
dom of St. Bartholomew (over high altar). 
Guido Reni, B. V. M. and Child (in north 
transept). 

St. Bartolommeo di Reno 

Lod. Caracci, The Circumcision and Ad- 
oration of the Magi. 

Sta. Cecilia 

Frescoes, by early Bolognese Artists, F. 
Francia, Lor. Costa, G. Francia, Chiodarolo 
and A mi CO Aspertini. 

The Celestini Church 

Lucio Massari, The Saviour appearing to 
the Magdalene in form of a Dove. 
458 

' \ 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Corpus Domini 

M. Franc eschini and L. Quaint, Frescoes 
in Cupola; Death of St Joseph. Lod. Ca- 
racci. Burial of the Virgin. 

St. Domenico 

Tiarini, The Child brought to Life (in 
sixth chapel, right). Guido, The Glory of 
Paradise (fresco in apse). Leonello Spada, 
St. Dominic Burning the Heretical Books 
(on left nearest the iron gate). Guercino, 
St. Thomas Aquinas writing on subject of 
the Eucharist (tenth chapel, right). Luca 
Cangiasi, The Nativity (in sacristy). Leo- 
nello Spada, St. Jerome (in sacristy). Fi- 
lippino Lippi, Marriage of St. Catherine 
(chapel right of choir). Gia. Francia, altar- 
piece with SS. Michael, Dominic, Francis 
and our Lord (in chapel adjoining north 
transept). Lod. Caracci, Guido and B. Cesi 
(a series of small paintings over altar in 
chapel of the Madonna del Rosario). 

St. Giacomo Maggiore 

Cavedoni, Christ appearing to Giov. da 
Facondo (fifth chapel, right). B. Passerotti, 
B. V. M. and Saints (in sixth chapel, right). 
459 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Innocenzo da Imola, The Marriage of St. 
Catherine (in eighth chapel, right). F. 
Francia, B. V. M. and Child with four An- 
gels and four Saints (altarpiece of chapel 
behind choir). 

St. Giovanni in Monte 

Guercino, St. Joseph with the Infant 
Christ; St. Jerome (third chapel, right). 
Lor. Costa, The Virgin enthroned with 
Saints. 

St. Stefano 

Jacopo Tintoretto, Christ washing the feet 
of the Disciples; St. John the Baptist with 
St. Jerome; The Last Supper (all in sac- 
risty). Angels playing on musical instru- 
ments (seventh chapel, right); B. V. M. 
with the Almighty and the Saviour above, 
and Saints below (in choir). 

St. Gregorio 

'Annibale Caracci, Baptism of our Lord. 

Sta. Maria de* Servi 

Guido, St. Carlo (a fresco — painted gra- 
tuitously in one day; in ninth chapel, left). 
Innocenza da Imola, The Annunciation (in 
the seventh chapel, left). 
460 



I 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Paolo 

Guercino, St. Gregory showing the Souls 
in Purgatory to the Almighty (above altar 
in south transept). 

St. Petronio 

Costa, The Madonna and Saints (in sev- 
enth chapel, left). Tiarini, St. Barbara 
(over altar in tenth chapel, left). 

» St. Salvatore 

Tiarini, The Nativity (in sixth chapel, 
right). Innocenzo da Imola, The Cruci- 
fixion with Saints (in seventh chapel, right). 
Garofalo, St. John Baptist kneeling before 
Zacharias (in first chapel, left). 

SS. Vitale e Agricola 

F. Francia, The Madonna surrounded by 
Angels playing on musical instruments (in 
first chapel, left). 

RAVENNA 

Cathedral 

Guido, The Fall of the Manna; The Meet- 
ing of Melchisedec and Abraham (in chapel 
461 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

of the Holy Sacrament). The Angel bring- 
ing food to Elijah (a fresco at entrance of 
sacristy). Carlo Bonone, The Grand Ban- 
quet of Ahasuerus (over great entrance). 
Benevenuti, Death of St. Peter Chrysologus; 
Camuccini, Consecration of the Church by 
Ursus (both in choir). 

Sta. Agata 

Francesca da Cotignola, The Crucifixion] 
Luca Longhi, SS. Agatha, Catherine an( 
Cecilia (one of his best works). 

St. Domenico 

Niccolo Rondinello, The Virgin and Chile 
with SS. Jerome, Dominic, Joseph, Francis 
of Assisi; The Annunciation; SS. Dominic 
and Peter; The Virgin and Child with the 
Magdalene and other Saints. Luca Longhi, 
The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary; The 
Invention of the Cross. Benedictus Armini, 
B. V. M. and Child with Saints. 

St. Francesco 

Sacchi d' Imola, The Madonna and the 
Donatoria. 

462 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Giovanni Battista 

Francesco Longhi, B. V. M. and Child 
with SS. Clement and Jerome; B. V. M. 
with SS. Matthew and Francis of Assisi. 

Sta. Maria in Porto 

Palma Giovane, The Martyrdom of St. 
Mark (third chapel, right). Luca Longhi, 
B. V. M. with St. Augustine and other Saints 

(fifth chapel, left). 
i 

St. Romualdo 

(Chapel of the College of Ravenna) 

Giambattista Barbiani, frescoes in cupola; 
St. Romualdo (in choir) ; frescoes in first 
chapel left of entrance. Guercino, St. Ro- 
mualdo (second chapel, left). Franceschini, 
SS. Bartholomew and Severus (first chapel, 
right). Carlo Cignani, St. Benedict (second 
chapel, right). Francesco da Cotignola, The 
Raising of Lazarus (in sacristy). Luca 
Longhi, The Marriage at Cana (in refectory 
of adjoining convent) . 

St. Vitalis 

Francesco Gessi, St. Benedict. Andrea 
Barbiani, St. Gertrude. Luca Longhi, B. 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

V. M. enthroned (in sacristy). Barbara 
Longhly Sta. Agata (in sacristy). Francesco 
Longhij The Annunciation (in sacristy). 
Giambattista Barbiani, Martyrdom of St. 
Erasmus (in sacristy). Camillo Procaccini, 
Martyrdom of SS. Philip and James (in 
sacristy). 

Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori 
Pupils of Giotto, many frescoes. 

MODENA 

The Cathedral 

Dosso Dossi, The Madonna with Saints 
(in fourth chapel left). 

St. Pietro 

Dosso Dossi, The Assumption (at third 
altar south). 

PARMA I 

The Cathedral \ 

i 
Correggio, Fresco of the Assumption in ■{ 

the dome; others by Lattanzio Gambara, J. | 

Loschi and B. Grassi (fifteenth century). 

464 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Giovanni Evangelista 

Correggio, Fresco of a Vision of St. John 
in the cupola. G. Francia, The Infant Sa- 
viour adored by the B. V. M. and St. Joseph 
(second chapel, right). G. Mazzola, St. 
James at the feet of the Virgin (in fourth 
chapel, right). Parmegianino, The Trans- 
figuration (at extremity of choir) ; The Vir- 
gin offering a Palm Branch to SS. Catherine 
and Nicholas (in fourth chapel, left). 

La Madonna delta Steccata 

Parmegianino, Moses Breaking the Tables 
of the Law (to left of entrance to choir) ; 
Adam and Eve and the Sybils, and The Vir- 
tues (over the organ). Anselmi, The Coro- 
nation of the Virgin (on vault over high 
altar) . 

St. Alessandro 

Parmegianino, The Virgin giving the 
Palm of Martyrdom to Sta. Giustina (over 
high altar). 

St. Lodovico 

Correggio, Mythological subjects in the 
dome of the Camera di San Paolo. 
465 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

PIACENZA 

The Cathedral 

Guercino and Morazzone, frescoes in the 
dome. Ludovico Caracci, frescoes in choir 
and on vault of apse; St. Martin dividing 
his cloak with the Beggar (in chapel left of 
choir). 

Sta. Maria di Campagna 

Pordenone, frescoes in cupola and other 
parts. 

CREMONA 

Sta. Agata 

Gervasio Gatti, St. Sebastian (1574). Ber- 
nardino C^m/>t, The Assumption (1542) and 
four frescoes from Life of St. Agatha. 

Cathedral 

Boccaccino, frescoes in north side of nave, 
eight scenes from Life of B. V. M. (1514). 
Bembo, The Epiphany and Presentation 
(1515). Altobello Melone, The Flight into 
Egypt and Massacre of the Innocents (1517). 
Boccaccino, Christ disputing with the Doc- 
466 



{ 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

tors (1518); A Madonna of the fourteenth 
century. Boccaccino, Christ and Four Pa- 
tron Saints of Cremona (1506) (on vault of 
choir) ; The Annunciation (on front of east- 
ernmost arch). Melone, Romanino and Por- 
denone, frescoes on south wall of nave. Luca 
Cattapani, Gregory XIV with SS. Anthony 
of Padua and Paul before the Madonna (in 
chapel three, left). Pordenone, Madonna 
and Saints with Donor (in chapel one, 
right). Cattapani, Crucifixion with SS. 
Fermo and Jerome (1593), (chapel three, 
right). Bernardino and Giulio Campi, sev- 
eral paintings in Chapel of Blessed Sacra- 
ment. Giorgio Caselli, frescoes of Old Tes- 
tament subjects in south transept (c. 1383). 

St. Ahbondio 

Malosso and Sammachini, frescoes in chief 
cupola from designs of Giulio Campi, 



BERGAMO 

Sta. Maria Maggiore 

Lorenzo Lotto, B. V. M. and Child with 
ten Saints (1516). This is the largest pic- 
467 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

ture painted by him, and includes portraits 
of the founder of the church, Alessandro and 
Barbara Martinego. Borgognone, a Pieta. 

St. Spirit 

Lotto, B. V. M. and Child with Saints 
(1521). Previtali, The same subject. Agos- 
tino da Caversegno, The Resurrection. Pre- 
vitali, SS. John Baptist, Nicholas, Bartholo- 
mew, Joseph and Dominic. Scipio Landen- 
sis, B. V. M. and Child and SS. Peter and 
Paul. Borgognone, The Descent of the Holy 
Spirit (1508). 

St. Bernardino 

Lotto, B. V. M. and Saints (1521). 

6*/. Alessandro della Croce 

Moroni, Coronation of the Virgin. Lotto, 
The Holy Trinity (in sacristy). Moroni, 
The Crucifixion (in sacristy). Previtali, Six 
Franciscan Saints (in sacristy). Girolamo 
da St. Croce, Coronation of the Virgin (in 
sacristy). 

The Cathedral 

G. Bellini, a small Madonna. Moroni, 
B. V. M. and Saints (1576). Marco d' Og- 
giono, Head of our Lord. 
468 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

BRESCIA 

Old Cathedral 

Pietro Rosa, St. Martin dividing his Cloak 
with the Beggar. Bernardino Gandini, 
Guardian Angels. Moretto, Abraham and 
Melchisedec, Last Supper, SS. Mark and 
Luke, Elijah Asleep, Abraham and Isaac. 
Romanino, Descent of the Manna, Visitation 
and Nativity of B. V. M. Moretto, The As- 
sumption. Moronei, The Flagellation. Cos- 
sali and Gaudini, Miraculous Apparition of 
our Lord to Constantine. 

New Cathedral 

Raima Giovane, B. V. M. and SS. Carlo 
Borromeo and Francesco and Bp. Marin- 
zorzi as donor. 

Sta. Afra 

Titian (?), The Woman taken in Adul- 
tery. Paolo Veronese, Martyrdom of Sta. 
Afra. Tintoretto, The Transfiguration. 
Raima Giovane, SS. Faustina and Jovita. 
Bassano, Baptism of Sta. Afra. Procaccini, 
B. V. M. and Child, with SS. Carlo Borro- 
meo and Latinus. 

469 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Sta. Agata 

Fop pa the Younger, Nativity and Adora- 
tion of the Magi. Calisto da Lodi, Martyr- 
dom of St. Agatha. 

St. Alessandro 

Fra Angelico da Fie sole, The Annuncia- 
tion (1432). Vincenzo Civerchio, Scenes 
from Life of B. V. M. in a predella. 

St. Clemente 
Moretto, five paintings. 

St. Faustino Maggiore 

Giambara, The Nativity. 

St. Francesco 

Romanino, B. V. M. and Child, with St. 
Francis, Anthony of Padua, Bonaventura 
and Louis (1502). Moretto, SS. Jerome, 
Margaret and Francis (1530). Francesco 
da Prato di Caravaggio, The Marriage of 
the Virgin (1547). 

St. Giovanni Evangelista 

Moretto, Massacre of the Innocents; B. 
V. M. and Child with Saints (at high altar). 
470 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Maganza, Two Prophets and Two Scenes 
from Life of St. John Baptist. Giovanni 
Bellini, The Maries weeping over the Body 
of the Saviour. Romanino, The Marriage 
of the Virgin. Lorenzo Costa, SS. Biagio, 
Margaret, Peter Martyr, Mary Magdalene 
and Barbara. 

Sta. Maria Calchera 

Moretto, SS. Jerome and Catherine. Ro- 
manino, St. ApoUinaris at Mass, attended by 
SS. Faustinus and Jovita. Calisto da Lodi, 
The Visitation. 

Sta. Maria delle Grazie 

Pieiro Rosa, St. Barbara kneeling before 
her Father in expectation of Death (1574). 
Procaccini, Nativity of B. V. M. • Ferra- 
molo. The Virgin and Child. 

Sta. Maria dei Miracoli 

Moretto, St. Nicholas leading four Chil- 
dren before the Throne of the Madonna. 

SS. Nazario e Celso 

Titian, The high-altar-piece. Moretto, 
Coronation of the Virgin and the Transfig- 
uration. Foppa the Younger, Martyrdom of 
SS. Nazario e Celso. 

471 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

PAVIA 

St. Marino 

Cesare da Sesto, B. V. M. with SS. Jerome 
and John Baptist. 

The Certosa 

Camillo Procaccini, St. Veronica (1605) 
(first chapel, right). Macrino d' Alba, B. 
V. M. and Child with four Angels adoring 
Infant Saviour; and The Resurrection (sec- 
ond chapel, right, dedicated to St. Hugh of 
Lincoln). Borgognone, The Evangelists. 
Carlo Cornara, Vision of St. Benedict (third 
chapel, right). Borgognone, The Crucifix- 
ion, with the Maries (1490) (fourth chapel, 
right). Borgognone, St. Sirus enthroned 
with SS. Stephen, Lawrence and two Bish- 
ops (fifth chapel to right). Guercino, SS. 
Peter and Paul adoring the Infant Saviour 
(sixth chapel to right). Pietro Perugino, 
The Eternal Father holding a globe, sur- 
mounted by Cherubim. Borgognone, The 
four Latin Doctors (second chapel, left). 
Crespi, The B. V. M. and Child, with SS. 
Carlo, Borromeo and Bruno (at end of south 
transept) . Bramantino, The Family of Gian 
472 



NOVARRA 
Cathedral, from the Northwest 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Galeazzo Visconti, the founder. Borgo- 
gnone, Coronation of the B. V. M. (in apse 
of north transept) . Crespi, frescoes in choir. 

NOVARA 

The Cathedral 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Holy Family 
with SS. Catherine, Gaudentius and Agabio. 
Below is a Pieta. Lanini, Crucifixion with 
SS. Mary Magdalene, Benedict and Gauden- 
tius. 

St. Gaudenzio 

Gaudenzio Ferrari (1515), The Nativity 
and Annunciation; the B. V. M. and Child, 
with SS. Ambrose, Gaudenzio, Agabio and 
a canonized Portrait of the Painter; SS. 
Edelcesio and Paul; SS. Peter and John 
Baptist. Morazzone, The Deposition. Mon- 
calvo, The Circumcision. Ribera (?), St. 
Jerome (in sacristy). 

ASTI 
The Cathedral 

A large and imposing cruciform structure 
almost entirely of red brick. There is a low 
473 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

octagonal lantern at the crossing and a fine 
massive campanile on the south side of the 
choir. The structure dates from between 
1323 and 1348, but although presenting some 
fine portions, as e. g., the south porch, it can- 
not as a whole compare for a moment with 
contemporary churches in England, France 
and Germany. The interior is spoilt by the 
painting with which it is completely be- 
daubed, but the ensemble is grand and im- 
posing. Macrino d' Alba, The Virgin and 
Child with SS. John Baptist, John Evangel- 
ist, Paul and another; The Marriage of the 
Virgin. 

CASALE MONFERRATO 

Cathedral 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Baptism of our 
Lord. 

VERCELLI 

St. Cristofero 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, Frescoes, in some of 

which he was assisted by his pupil, Lanini. 

Perhaps the most remarkable series of such 

works in Northern Italy (1532- 1534). The 

474 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

Madonna enthroned on panel, attended by 
saints, amongst whom St. Christopher, as 
patron of the church, is conspicuous in front. 
Lanini, The Virgin enthroned with St. Peter 
Martyr (in sacristy). 

Sta, Caterina 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Marriage of St. 
Catherine. 

MILAN 

St. Ambrose 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Deposition. L«- 
ini. The Three Marys and our Lord bearing 
His Cross. Luini (?), The B. V. M. and 
Child, with SS. Ambrose and Jerome; and 
with SS. Joachim and John the Baptist. 
Borgognone, Christ disputing with the Doc- 
tors. Luini, Ecce Homo with Angels. 

St. Eustorgio 

Borgognone, The Virgin with Infant Sa- 
viour and Two Saints (in first chapel, right). 

St. Giorgio in Plazzo 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, St. Jerome (in first 
chapel, right). B. Luini, The Deposition 
475 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

(over the altar), and The Ecce Homo (on 
one of the piers of the third chapel, right). 

St. Lorenzo 

A. Luini, The Baptism of our Lord (over 
first altar, right). 

St. Marco 

Lomazzo, The Virgin and Child with 
Saints (in third chapel, right). 

Sta. Maria del Carmine 

B. Luini, Fresco of the Madonna with SS. 
Roch and Sebastian. 

Sta. Maria presso San Celso 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Baptism of our 
Lord (in fourth recess, right). Paris Bor- 
done, St. Jerome, kneeling before the Infant 
Saviour (in principal chapel of south tran- 
sept) . Borgognone, The Madonna and Child 
(in first chapel, left). 

St. Maria delle Grazie 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, Frescoes (in fourth 
chapel, on the right). Leonardo da Vinci, 
the world-renowned Cenacolo, or Last Sup- 
per, on the wall of the refectory of the Con- 
476 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

vent (begun 1493). Montorfano, A fresco 
of the Crucifixion (1495), at opposite end of 
refectory. 

Sta. Maria delta Passione 

Gaudenzio Ferrari, The Last Supper (in 
chapel of north transept). Salmeggia, Christ 
in the Garden (in same chapel). B. Luini, 
The Pieta (over high altar). Crespi and 
Carlo JJrbini, Shutters of the organ. Crespi, 
The Four Doctors, and the eight pictures 
fixed to the great piers representing scenes 
in the Passion. 

St. Maurizio Maggiore 

B. Luini, Paintings on the great screen 
which divides the church into two parts; a 
most remarkable and almost unique example 
of such treatment. Other works of A. and 
B. Luini are the frescoes in the second and 
third chapels on the right hand side. 

St. Sebastiano 

Bramantino, The Martyrdom of St. Se- 
bastian. 

St. Sepolcro 

Bramantino, The Dead Christ, mourned 
by the Marys. 

477 



The Cathedrals of Northern Italy 

St. Simpliciano 

Borgognone, The Coronation of the Vir- 
gin (on vault of choir). 

St. Tomaso in terra mala 

A. Luini, The Magdalene. G. C. Procac- 
cini, St. Carlo Borromeo. Sabatelli the 
Younger, St. Anthony. 



THE END. 



478 



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Roms (1823-1842). 
Heider UND EiTELBERGER. Mittelalterliche Kunstdenkmale 

des Osterreichischen Kaiserstaates (i860). 
IsABELLE. Les Edifices Circulaires et les Domes, classes par 

ordre chronologique (1855). 
Knight (H. Gally). Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy 

(1842-1844). 
OsTEN. Die Bauwerke in dcr Lombardei, vom bis VII zum 

XlVJahrht (1846). 
Selvatico. Architettura e Scultura in Venezia (1847). 
WiEBEKiNG. Analyse descriptive des Monuments de I'An- 

tiquite (1838). 



INDEX 



Addison, 145, 146 

Agincourt, 312 

Agnellus, Bishop of Ravenna, 

247, 285, 297, 314 
Agnolo di Siena, 384 
Agostino, 384 
Aix-la-ChapeUe, 148 

Charlemagne's mausoleum 
at, 304, 307 
Albanis, 458 

Alberti, Leon Battista, 43 
Alessi, Galeasso, 104 
Alexander, 149 
Alexandria, 152, 159 

St. Mark, Church of, at, 158 
AUegranza, 396 
Allegri, 242 

Altichieri da Zevo, 445 
Altinum, Bishop of, 153 
Amalasuntha, 290 
Amati, Carlo, 421 
Ambrogio da Fossano, 363, 

438, 468, 472, 473, 475, 476, 
. 478 
Amico, 228 

Anaspertus, Archbishop, 409 
Anastasius, 406 
Angelico, Fra, da Fiesole, 470 
Angelo, Michael, 104, 120, 148, 

192, 202, 238 
Angilbertus, 409, 410, 413 
Antaeus, 207 
Anselmi, 465 
Antelami, Benedetto, 350 
Antolini, Filippo, 223 



Antonelli, 36 

Antonio da Padova, 124 

Aretusi, 242, 457 

Anus, 254 

Armini, Benedictus, 462 

Arnolfo, 43 

Amulph, Archbishop, 395 

Arrezo, 80 

St. Domenico, 138 

St. Donato, Shrine of, 384 
Aspertini, Amico, 458 
Astolphus, The Longobard 

King, 248 
Assisi, 124 

Gothic Church at, 329 

St. Francesco at, 81 

St. Francis at, 29 
Asti, 19, 32, 262, 473, 474 

Baptistery at, 38, 39 

Cathedral at, 26, 473, 474 

St. Pietro in Concava, 38 
Athalaric, 291 
Attino, 162 
Augustus, 312 
Auxerre 

St. Pierre at, 24 
Avanzi, Jacopo dei, 143, 445 

Bamberg, 70, 199, 332, 366 

Cathedral at, 222 
Barbiani, Andrea, 463 
Barbiani, Giambattista, 463, 

464 
Bartolo, Taddeo di, of Siena, 

132 . . 



481 



Index 



Basilica, 5 

Basilica Jovis, 8 

Bassano, Francesco, 443, 445, 

455, 469 
Bassano, Jacopo, 446, 452 
Bastianino, 202, 437, 457 
Bazzi, 32 
Bellini, The, 437 
Bellini, Gentile, 452 
Bellini, Giovanni, 444, 451, 
452, 453, 455, 456, 468, 471 
Bellini, Jacopo, 456 
Bembo, 466 
Benaglio, 439 
Benevenuti. 462 
Bergamo, 21, 29, 40, 366, 467, 
468 
Capella Colleoni, 42 
Cathedral, The, 468 
St. Agostino, 21 
St. Alessandro della Croce, 

468 
St. Bernardino, 468 
Sta. Maria Maggiore at, 2, 20, 

21, 42, 467, 468 
St, Spirito, 468 
Bertinoro, 244 
Binterim, 407 
Boccaccino, 466, 467 
Boetius, 290 

Bologna, 40, 206, 207, 208, 214, 

218, 229, 243, 244, 250, 

264, 331, 431, 437, 457, 

461 

Asinelli, tower of the, 206, 

207, 208 
Atrio di Pilato, the, 210, 213 
Cathedral, the, 45, 239-242, 

457-458 
Celestini, Church, the, 458 
Corpus Domini, 459 
Dominican Church. See St. 

Domenico 
Garisendi, tower of the, 206, 

207, 208 
Holy Trinity, church of the, 

210, 211, 213 
II Santissimo Crocifisso, 



Church of, 210, 211, 212- 
213 
La Madonna della Conso- 

lazione, 210 
Leaning Towers of, 323 
St. Bartolommeo di Porta, 

458 
St. Bartolommeo di Reno, 

458 
Sta. Cecilia, 458 
St. Domenico, 216-217, 21^ 

220, 459 
St Dominic, Shrine of, 384 
St. Francesco, 26, 220-225 
St. Giacomo Maggiore, 459, 

460 
St. Giovanni in Monte, 26, 

460 
St. Gregorio, 460 
Sta. Maria de' Servi, 460 
St. Paolo, 461 

St. Petronio, 26, 42, 80, 83, 
139, 225-239, 417, 426, 
461 
SS. Pietro e Paolo, 210, 211, 

212-213 
St. Salvatore, 461 
St. Sepolcro, 210, 211 
St. Stefano, 206, 208, 209- 

214, 460 
SS. Vitale e Agricola, 461 
Bonaventure, Nicolas, 419 
Bono de Malamocco, 159, 160 
Bonone, Carlo, 437, 462 
Bonsignori, 441 
Bordone, Paris, 452, 476 
Borgognone. See Ambrogio da 

Fossano 
Borromeo, Carlo. See St. 

Charles Borromeo 
Borromeo, Federigo, 427, 431 
Bourges, 199, 221 
Bramante, 44, 387 
Bramantino, 472, 477 
Brambilla, Signor M. C, 386, 

427 
Brescia, 361, 385, 437, 469-471 
Cathedral, the new, 469 



482 



Index 



Duomo Vecchia, the, at, 40, 

469 
St. Afra, 469 
Sta. Agata, 470 
St. Alessandro, 470 
St. Clemente, 470 
St. Faustino Maggiore, 470 
St. Francesco at, 20, 470 
St. Giovanni Evangelista, 

470, 471 
St. Julia at, 40 
Sta. Maria Calchera, 471 
Sta. Maria delle Grazie, 471 
Sta. Maria dei Miracoli, 471 
SS. Nazario e Celso, 471 

Brigwithe, 36 

Briolotiis, 86 

Brunelleschi, Filippo, 43, 148, 
420 

Brunswick, 359 

Brusasorzi, Felice, 437, 439, 
440, 441, 442 

Buildwas, 33 

Buonamici, 268 

Buonconsiglio, 444 

Busca, 427 

Byron, Lord, 200 

Byzantium, 10, 15 

Calisto da Lodi, 470, 471 
Campi, Bernardino, 466, 467 
Campi, Giulio, 467 
Camuccini, 462 
Can Grande, Tomb of, 102 
Can Signorio, Tomb of, 102 
Candiano IV, Doge, 162 
Cangiasi, Luca, 459 
Canterbury, 70 

Cathedral at, 73 

St. Thomas of, 100 
Capua, 431 
Caracci, the, 206 
Caracci, Annibale, 348, 437, 

460 
Caracci, Ludovico, 242, 357, 

437, 457, 458, 459, 466 
Caroto, 437, 440, 441, 442 
CarpacciOy 452 



Casale, Monferrato, 32, 474 

Cathedral at, 19, 474 
Caselli, Giorgio, 467 
CastigUone, F., 450 
Cattapani, Luca, 467 
Cavalcaselle, 438 
Cavazzolo, 440 
Caversegno, Agostino da, 468 
Cellini, Benvenuto, 227 
Cervia, 244 

Certosa, The, 26, 42, 472, 473 
Certosa, Cloisters of the, 323 
Certosa, Monastery of the, 362- 

367, 420 
Cesarea, 312 

Basilica of. See Ravenna, 
St. Apollinaris in Classe 

St. Lorenzo in, 45 
Cesena, 244 
Cesi, B., 459 
Charlemagne, 63, 68, 91, 148, 

172, 304 
Charles V, 249 
Chartres, 78, 199, 221 
Chiodarolo, 458 
Ciampini, 261, 266 
Cicognara, 188, 411, 438 
Cignani, Carlo, 463 
CioU, 228 

Civerchio, Vincenzo, 470 
Coblentz, St. Castor at, 370 
Cologne, 19. 332, 366 

Dom, The, at, 225 
Comacchio, 244 
Como, Duomo, The, at, 29 

St. Abbondio at, 20 
Concordia, 162 
Conegliano, Cima da, 437, 450, 

453, 454 . 
Constance, 361 
Constantine, 2, 3, 10, 13, 254 
Constantinople, 2, 15, 16, 172, 
188, 189, 245, 251, 268, 
277, 302, 395 

Apostles, Church of the, 164, 
168 

SS. Sergius and Bacchus, 
303 



483 



Index 



St. Sophia, 164, 165, 167, 
168, 169, 172, 303, 306 
Cora, 3 

Cornara, Carlo, 472 
Correggio, 348-349, 437, 465 
Cossali, 469 
Costa, Lorenzo, 458, 460, 461, 

471 
Cotignola, Francesco da, 462, 

463 
Cotta, 103 
Coutances, 71 

Cremona, 207, 262, 264, 357- 
362, 466, 467 

Baptistery at, 362 

Campanile, 359-361 

Cathedral at, 20, 323, 328, 
333, 357-359, 466, 467 

St. Abbondino, 467 

Sta. Agata, 466 

Torazzo or Torracio, The. 
See Campanile 
Crespi, 472, 473, 477 
Creti, Donato, 458 
Croce, F., 422 

Croce, St. Girolamo da, 468 
Crowe, 438 
Cuttaneo, 163 

Da Vinci, Leonardo, 476 

Dandolo, Andrea, 166 

Dante, 126, 130, 207, 289 

Dartein, 377 

Decius, the Emperor, 178 

Desiderius, The Longobard, 93 

Dijon, St. Michael, 24 

Dominic de Guzman, 217-218 

Donatello, 133 

Dossi, Dosso, 437, 457, 464 

Durandus, 430 

Du Sommerard, 265 

Ecclesiua, Bishop, 302 
Edesia, Andrino da, 374 
Edward I, of England, 110 
Egger, Holder, 247 
Ely, Cathedral at, 89 
Erfurt, 216 



Evelyn, 174 
Exeter, 115 
Exuperantius, the Bishop, 281 

Faenza, 244 

Faliero, Vitale, 163, 173 
Farinati, 440 
Fergusson, 392 
Ferramolo, 471 

Ferrara, 195, 200, 208, 244, 
264, 437, 456-457 

Cathedral at, 2, 20, 29, 138, 
195-197, 198, 200, 201, 
202-206, 456, 457 

Duomo, The. See Cathedral 

St. Benedetto, 457 

St. Cristoforo, 457 

St. Paolo, 457 
Ferrari, Defendenti, 32 
Ferrari, Gaudenzio, 32, 438, 

473, 474, 475, 476, 477 
Ferrario, 401 
Ferrey, Benjamin, 208 
Filippino of Modena, 425 
Fiorini, 242, 457 
Flandrin, Hippolyte, 299 
Florence, 207, 262, 263 

Campanile at, 124, 359 

Cathedral at, 26, 41, 43, 80, 
225, 229, 426 

Degli Angeli, Church at, 43 

Duomo. See Cathedral 

Sta. Croce at, 74, 81, 83 

St. Lorenzo, 43 

Sta. Maria Novella, 75, 77, 
81, 216 

St. Miniato, 88, 93, 339 

St. Spirito, 43 

Tabernacolo, Shrine of the, 
384 
Fondalo, Gabrino, 361 
Foppa the Younger, 438, 470, 

471 
Forli, 244 
Franceschini, 437, 458, 459, 

463 
Francias, The, 437, 457, 458, 

459, 460, 461, 465 



484 



Index 



Frederick Barbarossa, 389, 399 

Frederick II, Emperor, 138, 
249 

Freeman, Prof., 416 

Freiburg, 199 

Frivdi, Cathedral of Patri- 
archate of Aquileia, 404 

Fulda, Cathedral at, 46 

Fulk, Bishop of Touloiise, 217 

Gaddi, Taddeo, 132 

Galdinus, Archbishop, 399 

Galeazzo, Gian, 368 

Galla Placidia, widow of Con- 
stantine II, 247, 254, 255, 
267, 269, 277-279 * 

Gambara, Lattanzio, 464 

Gandini, Bernardino, 438, 469 

Garofalo, 437, 456, 457, 461 

Gatti, Gervasio, 466 

Gaudentius, The Abbot, 413 

Gelnhausen, 70, 366 
St. Mary, at, 222 

Genoa, 104 
St. Lorenzo, at, 195 

Gerbertus, Archbishop of Ra- 
venna, 380 

Gessi, Francesco, 463 

Giacobello, 223 

Giambara, 470 

Giolfino, 437, 438, 439, 442 

Giordano, Luca, 446, 455 

Giotto, 43, 124, 126, 129, 130, 
252, 281, 311, 437 
Pupils of, 464 

Giovane, Palma, 446, 454, 455, 
463, 469 

Giovanni, 120 

Giovanni da Padova, 124 

Giovanni di Pisa, 133 

Giovenoni, 32 

Girolamo da Brescia, Padre, 
44, 146 

Girolamo da Santa Croce, 445 

Girolamo da Udine, 452 

Girolamo dai Libri, 437, 439, 
440, 441 

Gloucester, 71 



Gmunden, Heinrich von, 421 

Grado, Patriarch of, 189 

Grampiglia, 449 

Grassi, B., 464 

Gratz, Johann von, 420 

Grazini, Ercole, 458 

Grimoaldus, King, 369 

Gualo, Cardinal, 36 

Guariento, 132 

Guercino, 437, 440, 459, 460, 

461, 463, 466, 472 
Guido de Como, 198, 206 
Guido Reni, 220, 437, 458, 459, 

460, 461 

Halberstadt, 359 

Cathedral at, 213 
Hardman, 237 
Hawksmoor, St. Mary Wool- 

noth, 241 
Henry II, the Emperor, 381 
Heraclea, 162 

Heraclius, the Emperor, 189 
Hildesheim, Cathedral at, 46, 

213 
Hippo, 380 
Honorius, 245, 246, 247, 254, 

269, 276 
Hugues, King, 380 

II Padovino, 455 

Imola, 208, 244 

Iimocent II, 381, 383 

Innocent IV, 249 

Innocenza da Imola, 437, 460, 

461 
Irnerius, 206 
Isabelle, M., 261 

Jacopo da Verona, 446 
Jacopo dalla Quercia, 227 
Jacopo of Campiona, 420 
Jameson, Mrs., 438 
Jerusalem, 2 
John I, Pope, 302 
Julian, the Emperor, 84 
Julianus, surnamed Argenta- 
rius, 305 



485 



Index 



Justinian, the Emperor, 164, 

256, 303, 305 
Justus of Padua. See Padovano 



Keble, 61 
Kirkstall, 33 
Kugler, 438 

Laach, 70 

Landensis, Scipio, 468 

Lanfranc, 206 

Lanfrancus, 333 

Lanini, 32, 438, 473, 474, 475 

Laon, 70 

Lasso, Orlando di, 242 

Lanzi, 202 

Le Mans, 78 

Legname, Cristoforo del, 152 

Leo III, Pope, 314 

Liberale, 438 

Liberius II, Archbishop, 288 

Libri, Girolamo dai, 437, 439, 

440, 441 
Licinio, Bernardino, 453 
Limburg, 366 

Limine, St. Thomaso at, 39 
Lincoln, 70, 199 

Cathedral at, 25, 73 
Lippi, Filippino, 459 
Lippstadt, Marien Kirche at 

422 
Lomazzo, 476 

Lombardo, Alfonso, 228, 241 
Lombardo, Pietro, 449 
Lombardo, TuUio, 449 
Longhi, Barbara, 464 
Longhi, Francesco, 463, 464 
Longhi, Luca, 457, 462, 463 
Longhena, Baldassare, 45, 449 
Loscni, J., 464 

Lotto, Lorenzo, 452, 467, 468 
Louis II, " the Pious," 370, 391 
Louvain, Notre Dame, 216 
Lubeck, 51 
Lucan, 205 
Lucca, 262 

Cathedral of, 22 



Luini, The, 438, 475, 476, 477, 

478 
Luitprandus, King, 379, 380, 

382, 385, 386 
Lyons, 148, 221 

Macrino d'Alba, 472, 474 
Maganza, 446, 471 
Magdeburg, 359 
Malatesta, Sigismund, Lord of 

Rimini, 315 
Malosso, 467 
Mantua, 264 

St. Andrea at, 44 
Marco of Campiona, 419 
Marco da Frisona, 420 
Marjorian, 390 
Martial, 319 

Martino I, Sarcophagus of, 102 
Mantegna, Andrea, 132, 133, 
134, 135-137, 437, 442, 443 
Marconi, Rocco, 452 
Massari, Lucio, 458 
Mazzola, G., 465 
Melone, Altobello, 466, 467 
Menabuoi, Giusto di Giovanni 

de, 123 
Michel, Felicita, 173 
Michele da Verona, 439 
Michiel, Domenico, 178 
Milan, 32, 66, 89, 186, 360, 361, 
362, 385, 389-435, 438, 
475-478 
Cathedral, The, 26, 29, 41, 
329, 390, 391, 397, 398, 
417-435 
Duomo, The. See Cathedral 
St. Ambrogio. See St. Am- 
brose 
St. Ambrose, 9, 10, 20, 87, 
213, 323, 328, 336, 370, 
374, 383, 389, 391-415, 
475 
St. Eustorgio, 475 
St. Giorgio in Plazzo, 475, 

476 
St. Lorenzo, 2, 476 
St. Marco, 476 



486 



Index 



Sta. Maria del Carmine, 476 
Sta. Maria delle Grazie, 216, 

476 
Sta. Maria della Passions, 

477 
Sta. Maria presso San Carlo, 

476, 477 
St. Maurizio. See San Mau- 

rizio Maggiore 
St. Maurizio Maggiore, 185, 

477 
St. Peter the Martyr, Shrine 

of, 384 
St. Satyrus, Chapel of, 414 
St. Sebastiano, 477 
St. Sepolcro, 477 
St. Simpliciano, 478 
St. Tomaso in terra mala, 
478 
Modena, 207, 208, 243, 331, 
332-342, 344, 345, 346, 
354, 464 
Campanile, Ghirlandina, 335, 

359 
Cathedral at, 20, 21, 200, 

328, 331, 332-342, 464 
St. Petronia at, 331 
St. Pietro, 464 
Mohammed II, 164 
Moncalvo, 473 
Monreale, Cathedral at, 16 
Montagna, Bartolommeo, 443, 

446 
Montagnano, J., 445 
Montorfano, 477 
Monza, 390, 409 

Cathedral at, 29, 379, 408 
Morazzone, 473 
Moretto, 438, 441, 469, 470, 

471 
Moro, Giov. Batt. del, 440 
Morone, Andrea, 44, 146 
Morone, Domenico, 437, 438, 

440 
Morone, Francesco, 437, 439 
Moronei, 469 
Moroni, 468 
Morosini, Maria, 173 



Munich, Cathedral at, 422 
Munster, 139 

Cathedral of, 16, 111 
Murano, A. da, 455 
Murano, G. da, 455 
Muratori, 247, 431 

Napoleon, 152, 166 

Neuss, 332 

Northampton, St. Sepulchre's 
at, 38 

Norwich, St. Andrew's Hall, 
216 

Novara, 32, 36, 262, 392, 438 
Baptistery at, 10, 36, 37, 38 
Cathedral at, 10, 36, 37 
St. Gaudentio, 37, 45, 473 
St. Gaudenzio. See St. 
Gaudentio 

Nuremberg, 51, 199 

Our Lady, Church of, 426 - 
St. Laurence, 422 
St. Sebald, 422 

Odoacer, 256, 386 
Oggione, Marco d', 468 
Omodeo, Giovanni Antonio, 

421 
Orbetto, 440 
Orseolo, Bishop, 153 
Orseolo, Pietro, 153, 162, 190 
Orvieto, 229, 409 

Cathedral at, 26, 29, 197, 198 
Osnabrtick, Cathedral at. 111 
Otho III, 396 
Otho I, coronation of, 408 
Ottici, 440 
Ottmarsheim, Octagonal 

Church at, 304 
Ouseley, Sir Frederick Gore, 

424 

Pacificus, Archdeacon, 68 

Padovanino, 445 

Padovano. See Menabuoi, 

Giusto di Giovanni de 
Padua, 119-148, 262, 264, 437, 

444-446 



487 



Index 



A city of Domes, 147 
Baptistery. See St. Gio- 
vanni Battista 
Cathedral, The, 120-121, 

146, 445 
Chapel of the Arena, 124, 

126-132, 444 
Chapel of St. Felix, 143 
Chapel of St. Giorgio, 445 
Chapel of St. Luke. See St. 

Antonio 
Eremitani, Church of the, 75, 
88, 124, 132-135, 202, 
444 
Palazzo della Ragione, 119- 

120 
St. Antonio, 16, 26, 80, 124, 

137-143, 144, 445 
St. Francesco, 445 
St. Gaetano, 445 
St. Giovanni Battista, 121- 

124 
Sta. Giustina, 143-147, 446 
Sta. Maria dell' Arena. See 

Chapel of the Arena 
Sta. Maria in Vanzo, 446 
St. Michele, 446 
Scrovegno Chapel. See 
Chapel of the Arena 
Palermo 
Capella Reale at, 16 
Cathedral at, 10 
La Tiza at, 15 
Maritana, the, at, 16 
Palestrina, 242 
Palladio, Andrea, 44, 104, 105, 

109, 146, 147, 448, 449 
Palma Vecchio, 444, 451, 454 
Pantheon, 4, 5 
Paolo, Jacobello, 184 
Paolo, Pietro, 184 
Parenzo in Istria, Cathedral of, 

154, 404 
Paris, 199, 216 

Notre Dame, at, 78 
St. Eustache, 24 
St. Etienne-du-Mont, 24 
St. Vincent de Paul, 299 



Parma, 121, 262, 336, 340, 342- 
353, 437, 464-465 
Baptistery of, 148, 200, 343, 

350—353 
Cathedral, The, 21, 328, 333, 

343-350, 383, 464 
Duomo, The, See Cathe- 
dral 
Madonna della Steccata at, 

45, 465 
St. Alessandro, 465 
St. Donino, 20 
St. Giovanni, 343 
St. Giovanni Evangelista, 

465 
St. Ludovico, 465 
Parmegianino, 437, 465 
Parodi, 446 

Participatio, Angelo, 152 
Participatio, Giovanni, 161 
Participatio, Giustiniano, 161, 

162 
Pastagalli, P., 421 
Paulus, Diaconus, 369 
Pavia, 40, 89, 243, 264, 336, 
362, 366, 367-388, 408 
Cathedral, The, 44, 368, 38&- 

388 
Certosa, The, near. See 

Certosa 
Duomo, The. See Cathedral 
St. Augustine, Shrine of, 

383-385 
St. Francesco, 369 
St. Giovanni in Borgo, 377, 

382 
St. Lanfranco, 377 
St. Lazaire, near, 383 
Sta. Maria del Populo, 385, 

386, 387 
Sta. Maria del Carmine. See 

St. Pantaleone 
St. Marino, 472 
St. Michele, 18, 20, 87, 323, 
328, 344, 369-370, 372- 
376, 377, 378, 379, 381, 
382, 383 
St. Pantaleone. 369 



Index 



St. Pietro in Coeli d'Oro, 
344, 369, 376 

St. Pietro in Coeli d'Oro, 
Monastery of, 380 

St. Stefano, 385, 386 

St. Teodoro, 377 
Pellegrini, 45, 422, 427 
Pellizone, Andrea, 427 
Pepin, King of Italy, 91, 248 
P6rigueux, St. Front, at, 164 
Perugia, 138 
Perugino, Pietro, 472 
PhUlips, Prof., 350 
Piacenza, 243, 336, 343, 353- 
357, 359, 466 

Cathedral at, 20, 21, 328, 
333, 353-357, 466 

Sta. Maria di Campagna, 466 
Picchini, 422 

Pietro della Massegne, 224 
Pisa, 138, 198, 207, 262, 263, 
338 

Baptistery, 22, 139, 148 

Campo Santo, 22 

Cathedral, 22, 378 

Sta. Katerina, 216 

Leaning Tower of, 22, 359 

Sta. Maria della Spina, 
Chapel of, at, 29 
Pisanello, 82, 95 
Pisano, Andrea, 102 
Pisano, Giovanni, 138 
Pisano, Niccola, 26, 80, 137, 

138-139, 140, 196, 218 
Pisano, Vittore, 82 
Pistoja, 262 

St. Andrea, 198 

St. Bartolommeo, 198 
Pius IX, 229 
Polenta, The, 249 
Pordenone, 466, 467 
Prato 

St. Dominic, 216 
Prato di Caravaggio, Francesco 

da, 470 
Previtali, 468 
Procaccini, Camillo, 357, 464, 

469, 471, 472, 478 



Procopius, 164 
Pugin, 201, 237 



Ratisbon, 65, 216 

Ravenna, 11, 14, 17, 40, 125, 

148, 157, 186, 244-321, 

331, 461-464 
" Anastasis," Cathedral of, 

246 
Arian Baptistery, The. See 

Sta. Maria in Cosmedin 
Baptistery, The, 247, 256, 

257-264, 272, 275, 294, 

295, 414 
Basilicas of Justinian, 13 
Cathedral, The, 247, 255, 

256, 257, 264-269, 461, 

462 
Chapel in Archbishop's Pal- 
ace, 285-287 
Sta. Agata Maggiore, 256, 

281-285, 289, 462 
St. ApoUinaris in Classe, 12, 

256, 282, 302, 311-319, 328 
St. ApoUinaris Nuovo, 12, 

256, 282, 291, 297-302 
St. Domenico, 12, 256, 462 
St. Francesco, 256, 287, 462 
St. Giovanni Battista, 257- 

264, 463 
St. Giovanni Evangelista, 

124, 255, 256, 277-281 
Sta. Maria in Memoriam 

Regis. See Theodoric, 

Mausoleum of 
Sta. Maria ad Farma. See 

Theodoric, Mausoleum of 
Sta. Maria Rotunda. See 

Theodoric, Mausoleum of 
Sta. Maria in Cosmedin, 256, 

293-295 
Sta. Maria in Porto, 44, 256, 

311, 463 
Sta. Maria in Porto Fuori, 

256, 311, 464 
Sacellum Arii. See St. 

ApoUinaris Nuovo 



489 



Index 



St. Martin. See St. Apolli- 

naris Nuovo 
St. Martino in Coelo Aureo. 
See St. ApoUinaris Nuovo 
St. Michele, 255 
SS. Nazario e Celso, 247, 256, 

269 
St. Niccolo, 12 
St. Pietro, 12 
St. Pietro Chrysologo, 256 
St. Romualdo, 463 
St. Spirito, 12, 256, 293, 295- 

296 
St. Teodoro. See St. Spirito 
St. Vitale, 11, 12, 14, 148, 
256, 269, 282, 292, 302- 
311, 318, 414, 463, 464 
St. Vitalis. See St. Vitale 
Rheims, 70 

Cathedral at, 25, 195 
Ribera, 473 
Rimini, 244 

St. Francesco, 43 
Robertson, 178 
Robolini, 382, 386 
Rocchi, Cristoforo, 44, 387 
Roger, 16 
Romanino, 438, 467, 469, 470, 

471 
Romano, Giulio, 439 
Rome, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 15, 
124, 147, 246, 248, 250, 
251, 253, 257, 269, 271, 
305, 320, 321, 390 
Pantheon, 147, 170 
Sta. Agnese in, 9, 219, 399 
St. Carlino, 219 
St. Clemente, 10, 75, 404 
St. Giorgio in Velabro, 404 
SS. Helena and Constantia, 

291 
St. John Lateran, 219 
St. Lorenzo in, 9, 10 
Sta. Maria Sopre Minerva 

at, 77, 216 
St. Paul extra Muros at, 74 
S.S. Quattro Coronati, 399 
Rondinello, Niccolo, 462 



Rosa, Pietro, 437, 469 
Rosselli, Niccolo, 437, 457 
Rosette, 202 
Rossi, Properzia di, 228 
Rouen, 34, 70, 71, 199 
Ruskin, 177, 345 
Rustico de Torcello, 159 

St. Alban's Cathedral, 186, 287 
St. Ambrose, 431 
St. ApoUinaris, 246 
St. Augustine, 379 

Shrine of. See Favia 
St. Barbatian, 278 

Tomb of, 267 
St. Barnabas, 431 
St. Charles Borromeo, 65, 396, 
426, 427, 428, 431 

Sepulchre of, 429 
St. Claudian, 159 
St. Epiphanius, 385 
St. Euphemia, Church of, 100 
St. Geminianus, 333 
St. Gothard, Campanile of, 323 
St. John, 6 

St. John Chrysostom, 98 
St. Mark, 152, 158-161, 188 
St. Mayeul, 380 
St. Neon, Bishop of Ravenna, 

259 
St. Odo, 380 
St. Omer, 142 
St. Paul's Cathedral, 44, 241, 

388 
St. Peter, 246 
St. Peter's, 144, 394 
St. Peter Chrysologus, 285 
St. Petronius, 211, 212 
St. Romanus, first Monastery 

of Dominicans, 217 
St. Sirus, first Bishop of Pavia, 

386 
St. Sophia, 14 
St. Tecla, Cathedral of, 399 
St. Ursus, 246, 264 
St. Zeno, Bishop of Verona, 84 
Sabatelli, the Younger, 478 
Sacchi, 382, 385 



490 



Index 



Sacchi d'Imola, 462 

Salisbury, 71 

Salmeggia, 477 

Salonica, 14 

Salviati, 453 

Sammaehini, 467 

Sangallo, 104 

Sanmichele, Madonna di Cam- 

pagna, Church of the, at, 44 
Sanmichele, Michele, 44, 62, 

99, 439 
Sansovino, Jacopo, 152, 228, 

448, 449 
Sarsina, 244 
Sassoferrato, 445 
Scala, Delia, Tombs of the, 101 
Scarsellino, 457 ' 

Scott, Sir Gilbert, 208, 209 
Scrovegno, Enrico, 129, 130 
Seccadenari, 228 
Selvatico, 158 
Serena, 276 
Siena, 138, 198, 229, 409 

Cathedral at, 26, 29 
Sigismund, the Emperor, 361 
Silius Italicus, 368 
Simone da Orsenigo, 419 
Smeraldi, 449 
Solosmeo, 228 
Spada, Leonello, 459 
Speranza, 444 
Spiers, Mr. R. Phen6, 282 
Squarcione, 135 
StUicho, 277 

Tomb of, 412 
Strabo, 245 
Strasburg, 216 

Cathedral at, 25 
Symmachus, 290 
Syracuse, 3 

Tedesco, Jacopo, 329 
Theodatus, 290 
Theodora, 305 

Theodoric, The Arian, 247, 256, 
289-291, 293, 294, 295, 297 
Mausoleum of, 291-293 
Theodosius, 394 



Thessalonica, 314, 394 
Thrasimund, King, 380 
Tiarini, 437, 461 
Tibaldi, Domenico, 45 
Tintoretto, 181, 437, 444, 450, 

451, 452, 454, 455, 456, 469 
Tintoretto, Jacopo, 441, 460 
Titian, 348, 349, 437, 439, 445, 

451, 453, 455, 469, 471 
Torbido, 440 
Torcello, 9, 153, 185, 199 

Cathedral of, 75, 153-157 

Sta. Fosca, 157-158 
ToreUi, 439 

Toscanella. Church at, 22 
Toulouse, 216, 217, 218 

Church of the Jacobins, 216 
Tournai, 142 
Traversari, The, 249 
Trent, 87 
Tribolo, 227, 228 
Tura, Cosimo, 437, 456, 457 
Turin, 32, 243 

UgheUi, 410 
Unknovra Artist, 445 
Unulfus, 369 
Urbini, Carlo, 477 

Valentinian I, The Emperor, 

84 
Valentinian II, 247 
Vandyke, 454 
Vasari, 227, 228, 384 
Venice, 11, 14, 23, 24, 30, 41, 
104, 105, 148, 149, 150, 
152, 158, 160, 169, 170, 
172, 175, 186, 188, 190, 
194, 200, 207, 245, 249, 
437, 446-456 
Cathedral at. See St. Marks 
Ducal Chapel, 152, 161-162 
Frari, Church of the. See 
Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei 
Frari 
II Redentore, 449, 455 
St. Cassiano, 450 
La Madonna del Orto, 454 



491 



Index 



Sta. Caterina, 451 

St. Francesco della Vigna, 

449 
St. Geminiano, 152, 448 
St. Giacomo dall' Orio, 447 
St. Giacomo di Rialto, 450, 

451 
St. Giobbe, 452 
St. Giorgio de Greci, 449 
St. Giorgio Maggiore, 448, 

452 
St. Giovanni Crisostomo, 

449 453 
SS. Giovanni e Paolo, 26, 30, 

31, 75, 76, 114, 216, 446, 

451, 452 
St. Giovanni in Bragola, 452, 

453 
St. Gregorio, 447 
St. Louis of Toulouse, 454 
Sta. Maria Assunta dei 

Gesuiti, 451 
Sta. Maria dei Miracoli, 448, 

449 
Sta. Maria del Carmine, 450 
Sta. Maria della Carita, 

447 
Sta. Maria della Miseri- 

cordia, 454 
Sta. Maria della Salute, 45, 

449, 455 
Sta. Maria Formosa, 454 
Sta. Maria Gloriosa dei 

Frari, 26, 30, 31, 75, 93, 

114, 185, 241, 446, 450, 

453 
St. Mark's, 14, 93, 138, 149- 

153, 157, 158, 162-194, 

199, 404 
St. Pantaleone, 455 
St. Pietro di Castello, 187, 

449 
St. Salvatore, 449, 455, 456 
St. Sebastiano, 450, 456 
St. Stefano, 447 
St. Theodore, 152, 161 
Sta. Zaccaria, 42, 152, 448, 

456 



Vercelli, 19, 32-36, 40, 186, 

438, 474, 475 
St. Andrews at, 29, 33-36 
Sta. Caterina, 475 
St. Cristofero, 474, 475 
Verda, 444 

Verden, The Dom at, 422 
VemeUle, M., 164 
Verona, 23, 44, 48-103, 104, 

133,208,243,437,438-442 
Baptistery, 67 
Capella Pellegrini, 439 
Cathedral, The, 29, 61-69, 

96, 110, 323, 349, 426, 

437, 438-439 
Duomo, The. See Cathedral 
Sta. Anastasia, 29, 75, 76- 

84, 95, 216, 226, 439 
St. Bernardino, 100 
Sta. Elena, 439 
St. Fermo. See St. Fermo 

Maggiore 
St. Fermo Maggiore, 24, 75 

88, 92-98, 100, 133, 185, 

202, 440, 448 
St. Giorgio. See St. Giorgio 

in Braida 
St. Giorgio in Braida, 99, 440 
St. Giovanni in Fonte, 

Church of, 66-67 
St. Lorenzo, 99-100, 442 
Sta. Maria Antica,,101 
Sta. Maria in Organo, 440- 

441 
Sta. Maria Matricolare, 99 
SS. Nazario e Celso, 441 
St. Paolo, 441 
St. Peter, Chapel of, 84 
St. Stefano, 98-99, 442 
St. Tomaso Cantuariense, 

442 
St. Zeno, 20, 84-91, 101, 136, 

202, 328, 339, 442, 448 
Veronese, Paolo, 437, 440, 446, 

451, 452, 455, 456, 469 
Vespasian, 246 

Vicenza, 104-118, 140, 396, 
443-444. 



492 



Index 



Cathedral, The, at, lOe-113, 

115, 140, 443 
Duomo. See Cathedral 

La Santa Corona, 26, 113- 

116, 443, 444 

St. Lorenzo, at, 26, 76, 113, 
116-117, 140, 443 

St. Rocco, 444 

St. Stefano, 117-118, 444 
Vienne, 3 

Vignola, Rev. M, Parlo, 66 
Vincenzi, Antonio, 80, 225 
Vittoria. 242 



Vivarini, 437, 452, 453 

Walsingham, Alan de, 89 
Wells, 34, 70, 195, 199 
Werden, 332 
Whewell, Dr., 328 
WiUiam III, 16 
Wiseman, Cardinal, 320 
Worcester, 71 

Zaccagni, Francesco, 45 
Zevio, Altichieri da, 143 
Ziani, Sebastiano, 152 



493 



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